Search engine optimization (SEO) is constantly changing. Do you want to achieve good positions for your SEO in the organic search results? Then now is the best time to define your SEO strategy. How do you optimize your website for Google & Co. And which trends can you adapt to? An overview.
SEO review
To understand where SEO is heading in 2020, you should look back at the changes in 2019. This will help you recognize the trends and ambitions of the search engine giants. And my goodness, 2019 was a turbulent year for us search engine optimizers.
Tip: See also the SEO Guide 2019 on our blog, with tips on Google RankBrain, Mobile First and Voice Search.
Changes to the search algorithm
Every year, Google makes adjustments to its search algorithm. The difference to previous years: The number of SEO updates or changes continues to increase. Many thanks at this point to Peter J. Meyers, who researched the following figures for Google:
- 2018: 3234 optimizations
- 2017: 2453 changes
- 2016: 1653 optimizations
- 2013: 890 optimizations
- ...
- 2009: 350-400 changes
This statement is most interesting for 2018:
"In 2018 alone, we made more than 3234 optimizations to Google Search. These range from innovations such as the Knowledge Graph to updating our ranking algorithms. This is how we ensure that we continue to deliver relevant and reliable content."
While the high number of changes speaks for rather small optimizations, there were also the much-noticed major updates this year. Here is an overview before I move on to the trends for 2020.
Confirmed Google algorithm updates for 2019
The Google Core March Update (March 12, 2019): Also known as the Florida 2 update. It stands for comprehensive adjustments to the core algorithm. Such updates are usually about the quality of search results in general. There are - at least according to Google - no specific recommendations to optimize your websites for the update.
The Google Core June Update (June 4, 2019) saw a similar update to the core algorithm. Google's Twitter channel SearchLiaison will let you know when major changes go live:
Google Domain Diversity Update (June 07, 2019): This involved adjusting the search results if a domain with multiple URLs dominates a search query. This update is intended to prevent a website from ranking multiple times for the same search term. The Google update to reduce adult content (July 16, 2019) favors adult content. In other words: If there is an adult interpretation for a search query, Google prefers it.
On September 18, 2019, the presentation of testimonials and reviews was adjusted: Companies that have generated their own structured data for reviews (so-called Google stars in the serps) are no longer taken into account by the algorithm.
The Google BERT update from October 19, 2019, which affects 10 percent of all Google searches worldwide, is causing a lot of discussion. BERT stands for "Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers" and is intended to improve text comprehension of search queries in natural language (natural language processing / NLP). The search giant wants to further improve the quality of its search results. A few more tips on this later.
Announcements, product updates & WordPress
Google introduces new link attributes
The announcement on September 10, 2019 had it all: Google declared that it would treat the nofollow attribute differently in future. The company provides you with concrete solutions on how to deal with sponsored links and user-generated content.
The changes serve to differentiate the purpose and origin of a link more precisely - in order to better understand the relationship between your content and that of other websites. More information on this will follow later.
Update of the Search Console
Back in 2018, Google announced that the Search Console (formerly: Webmaster Tools) would be given a completely new interface. On September 9, 2019, the time had finally come: the old Search Console was replaced by the new interface.
It also gradually received new updates and functions. These include information that the old Search Console did not provide. For example, the Search Console now provides information about loading times that are too long:
Tip: See our WordPress hosting comparison. You can also find out how to optimize the speed of your website in our performance e-book.
There is also new information about the number of clicks on videos and numerous other updates. Basically, we are now getting a whole close look at how Google understands our website from a technical perspective. Google wouldn't be doing all this if we could neglect the technical optimizations.
Updates for Pagespeed, Lighthouse, TestMySiteWithGoogle
Webmasters have known for years that loading time plays an important role for the user experience and SEO. After all, the first mobile-first indexing has been around since 2018, and as the loading time can vary due to network availability or network speed, it makes sense to reduce it.
In addition to the Search Console, Google has updated and launched a number of products to help you optimize your website:
- PageSpeed Insights
- Test my Site with Google
- Lighthouse (also included in the Chrome developer tools)
Google's entry into the WordPress plugin directory
Google has released several plugins for WordPress this year. The open source CMS therefore carries a lot of weight for Google. For example, the Google Site Kit came onto the market. It provides important data on Analytics, the Search Console and PageSpeed. The right WordPress plugin is available at wordpress.org.
Or the native Lazyload plugin. There are already some WordPress plugins out there that support lazy load. However, the extension once again shows the search engine giant's ambition to further reduce loading times for WordPress & Co.
More tools from Google for SEO 2020
In addition to these tools, there were a whole series of other announcements in 2019:
- Clarification of which rules in robots.txt are still supported in 2019 and which are not.
- The launch of Google Jobs in Germany in May 2019.
- The new FAQ & HowTo feature using structured data in the search results.
- As well as Google's investments to better crawl Javascript and better understand the content. Announcements here range from the new Evergreen Crawling Bot to brand new training courses, such as the Webmaster Javascript SEO Series.
That wasn't even all the announcements. Many details were only mentioned in the Webmaster Hangouts or on Twitter. So it's worth subscribing to these channels. But one thing is certain: SEOs had a lot to learn this year.
Tip: Dominik regularly writes SEO articles for us, in which he reports on the most important trends at Google. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or via our newsletter to receive his articles.
You can derive the following recommendations for your SEO 2020 from the announcements and algorithm updates of the last two years:
The user experience has priority
Even in 2020, the most important imperative remains to fulfill the interests of your visitors. The boundary between user experience and search engine optimization is blurring with each passing year. It does not seem unlikely that signals such as dwell time will replace tried-and-tested signals from SEO (e.g. backlinks).
As a website operator, you also benefit from the many other positive effects of the user experience. Be it through higher sales or faster loading times. However, this also means that you need to focus on the essentials:
- Only invest in content that fulfills the search intent of your visitors. See Jan Tissler's article on content strategy.
- Forget complicated funnels.
- Don't use tricks to get stars in the search results or create content that is not in the interests of your customers or users. This didn't work well in 2019 and will work even worse in the coming years. Precisely because search engines are getting better and better at understanding content and its context.
- Avoid duplicate content or unnecessary intermediate pages. Guide your users to their destination as quickly as possible.
Build a brand or authority
Do you remember the Medi Update from 2018? In August 2018, there was a major Google Core Update that mainly affected the healthcare industry. Hence the name.
As it turned out later, this update was not aimed at the industry at all. Instead, the truth content and the authority of a piece of content were reweighted. This content was classified according to the so-called Search Raters Quality Guidelines (PDF). A number of people rate the quality of a website according to corresponding guidelines. The data collected is then used to adjust the algorithm.
The 2 sections on YMYL (Your Money your Life) and EAT (Expertise - Authority - Trust) are of particular value. This refers to sites that publish content that can have a negative impact on a person's life. For example, false information on medicine & illnesses, finance or law.
False information is against the interests of the user. It only gives the website operator an advantage. But there are also other reasons. Companies are looking for ways to minimize the damage caused by fake news. Among other things, this resulted from the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal. This makes it all the more important to build an authority or brand. In other words, to create websites whose information content can be trusted. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt confirmed this back in 2008:
"Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool."
As a company that writes about sensitive topics, you can pay attention to the following optimization options, for example:
- Work with references in your content.
- Use microdata and author boxes to make it clear who wrote the content.
- Publish information about what qualifies you to write about the topic.
- Build up an authority on the topic in your niche. For example, through guest posts, link-building on topic-relevant sites or on industry catalogs.
The traffic of one of my customers also collapsed after the update in August 2018. However, following the tips in the Quality Rater Guidelines helped to restore the original traffic:
I recommend everyone involved in SEO 2020 to read the Raters Quality Guidelines thoroughly!
Technical optimization is more important than ever
If we look back at all the product updates of the last two years, we should ask ourselves why Google is giving us all these tools. Certainly not for no reason.
Technical search engine optimization means, among other things: Make it clear to search engines which content on your website is really relevant. The methods that worked very well in 2019 will remain valid in 2020. For example, internal linking and pillar content. Use services such as the Search Console to identify 404 errors on your website and fix them. This prevents unnecessary redirects. Also test whether the structured data on your website is programmed correctly:
In short: don't neglect the technical structure of your website. Content may be king. But if every operator only creates high-quality content, then it will become increasingly difficult for search engines to choose the best content from all the variations. The influence of other ranking factors (loading time, internal linking, relevance, backlinks) will once again play a decisive role in competitive niches.
Search engines have an interest in crawling only the relevant information on a website. Make it clear which urls serve which purpose and how they may be indexed.
Tip: I'll show you how to subject your website to a technical audit in my detailed tutorial on the SEO audit. Including numerous recommendations for improving your pages.
Speed optimization and WordPress hosting
If we look back at the product updates of the last two years, it is striking: The majority of the changes are for performance optimization. It is no coincidence that so much effort was put into speed following the announcement of the "Mobile First Index". Mobile devices have already left desktop searches behind. This trend will continue to grow in the coming years. You can check the mobile speed of your websites with Google Lighthouse:
Webmasters should consider the fast delivery of their websites and choose the right WordPress hosting. With this and the right measures, the loading times of your projects can be improved enormously.
Better understanding of content and content
Search engines also made efforts in 2019 to better understand content and contexts. Most core updates in 2019 were aimed at understanding text. Or improving the user experience.
The way Google views nofollow links will change from March 2020. While it was previously common practice in the affiliate industry to declare all outbound advertising links as "nofollow", Google is for the first time interested in understanding the context behind ad-financed links. Or which content on a page was created by users. Google is therefore launching two new link attributes.
In addition, updates such as "BERT" aim to further improve text comprehension. Unfortunately, website operators have little opportunity for technical optimization. We can only optimize our content naturally. In other words, we can write texts that are of high quality and primarily offer meaning and added value for the user. As is the case with tutorials like this one. There is a very good explanatory article about BERT on the Moz blog, including a video.
Tip: Do you want to find out which content is interesting for your visitors? Then I recommend keyword research. I'll explain it to you step by step.
Structured data is becoming increasingly important
Structured data or schema markup has already been a major topic in recent years. New ways to make your own website more attractive in search results were also offered in 2019. In some cases, you are even rewarded with better rankings.
Structured data will also become increasingly important in 2020. Every website operator should find out whether there is a data format for their industry that they can use to their advantage. Local companies can start with the LocalBusiness Markup, for example.
A decision tree by Rand Fishkin will help you decide whether structured data gives you an advantage. You can read it in the article Optimizing for and against Google on searchengineland.com.
Position 0 through FAQ & HowTo boxes
The new FAQ boxes that answer search queries in the search results are a complicated issue. And which increasingly often end in so-called zero (0) click results. Incidentally, these now account for almost half of all searches.
On the other hand, the new function gives you the chance to be mentioned in particularly attractive positions. Here is an example:
This new feature is problematic because it makes Google a direct competitor in the search results for the first time. I love FAQ boxes, but as a website operator you have to seriously ask yourself:
- What information do you give the search engine?
- Do you want to pass this opportunity on to your competitors?
- How important is the click for this search query for your website? Or how high is the chance that the FAQ box will end in a click?
- Is it possible to write the content in such a way that it results in a click?
Rand Fishkin said at SMX East:
The prisoner's dilemma is: Do I optimize for zero-click searches, for providing these answers, for marking my results the way Google wants them - and potentially losing traffic as a result?
He presents the following decision tree as a possible solution:
The comeback of meta-optimization
And this leads us to an optimization option that is often neglected: Meta titles and meta descriptions! And yes, meta information is no longer an active ranking factor. But the click-through rate (CTR) in the serps has a passive positive effect on the search engine optimization of your site.
The difference in 2019: With the ever-increasing trend of 0-click interactions and the breadth of information in FAQ boxes, you need to stand out more and more to get a click in the search results.
Don't rely on the automatic generation of meta information. Use an SEO plugin for WordPress to ensure that the most important URLs of your domain have an appealing, attractive meta description. It must be written in such an interesting way that it stands out from FAQs and better positioning if necessary.
Javascript and SEO
Javascript is a great thing - search engines go to great lengths to better understand Javascript content. They are educating webmasters through free courses and updating their own crawlers. And huge progress has been made in recent years. But in 2020, static pages will still have an advantage over pages with dynamic content when it comes to search engine optimization. I am sure of that.
These were my thoughts on SEO trends in 2020. What is your personal top trend? Do you have any questions about SEO strategy 2020? Which methods worked particularly well for you in 2019? I look forward to a lively exchange in the comments!
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Featured image: Vince Fleming
