Creating an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is essential if you want to be successful in 2020. SEO is a field that’s constantly evolving, and is largely governed by the updates search engines make to their ranking algorithms. To stay on top of the game, you need to learn how to keep up with the trends, keep an eye on Google’s webmaster guidelines, and adjust your SEO strategy accordingly.
In this article, we’ll try to bring you up to speed with the most effective SEO techniques you can adopt in your marketing strategy for 2020.
1. Create Valuable and Original Content
The content you create is what actually attracts and keeps your audience, customers, and readers.
Valuable and original content doesn’t just fall from the sky—you have to work for it. These are some of the most important things you need to look for when creating good quality content:
- Keep it original, well-researched, and truthful. Nobody likes to read recycled content.
- Allow your site to have guest posts. This is a great opportunity for networking, as well as for organically expanding your audience.
- Make your content mobile responsive. Mobile-friendly content is a must nowadays, especially if you want to reach younger customers.
- Introduce a personal perspective into the content you’re serving. Personal experiences are an invaluable presence when it comes to creating original content. They give the text more edginess and also make it easier to relate to your readers.
Most of the time, a target audience will be attracted by websites that offer something new and different. This means that if you have that x-factor that will make them keep coming to your site, you’ve done a great job!
2. Keep Updating Your Old Content
What’s important to keep you fresh and ready for 2020 is to update your blog. This doesn’t mean that you have to delete older posts you’ve put money and effort in, but you definitely have to change them, reshape them, make them longer, and update all the existing information.
Google actually ranks content that is longer than 1,900 words higher, so keep that in mind and if your blog consists of articles that have around 500 to 800 words, make sure you extend them a little bit.
Also, change some posts that talk about past trends and make them serve new and fresh information about 2020. This way, you’ll be strengthening website pages that are possibly already ranking with something that will make them more relevant to present-day visitors.
3. Create a Link-Building Strategy That Works!
There are many link-building strategies that website owners use to get a higher ranking. Some of the most commonly used ones are:
- Guest blogging
- Email outreach to influencers
- Link exchange
- Creating a Private Blog Network using good PBN Hosting
- Getting a backlink by answering questions on Q&A sites
Some strategies require you to be dependent on others, while others will give you full control over the situation.
For instance, if you choose to build a PBN as a link-building strategy, you’re at risk of being discovered by the search engines because this is a grey-hat SEO technique. However, this strategy will give you the opportunity to choose when and how much you will backlink to your main site from the other sites within your network, which will render guest-posting virtually unnecessary.
4. Make Sure Your Website Is Loading Fast
Do you know that 53% of your mobile users will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load?
Not only does this show how website speed factors into the equation, but it also gives you a good insight into the general level of tolerance website visitors today have.
To stay on top of whether your website serves your content to users with competitive speed, you first need to check how it’s performing. There are a few free tools that allow you to do that, like PageSpeed Insights, for example.
If it turns out that your website speed is not up there with your competitors, you can start looking into ways to make your website load faster.
Some of the things you can do are:
- Optimize the images on your site
- Check the bandwidth or disk space allowance by your web hosting provide
- Check for unclean code
- See if there are too many HTTP requests
- Look into JavaScript issues
- Get a good quality web host
5. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices
Optimizing your site for mobile devices is essential—people spend an average of 4 hours daily on their mobile phones, which means that if you don’t make your site mobile-responsive, you’re potentially neglecting a big traffic channel!
These are some of the ways you can make your site mobile-responsive:
- Your website should load fast on a mobile device and look good on a mobile-size screen once people open it.
- Visitors should be able to navigate your mobile site easily and quickly.
- Make sure to avoid any formats that look weird or won’t fit mobile-size screens.
6. Use Long-Tail Keywords
The reality is that one-word keywords have become harder to rank for and are generally more competitive. Nowadays, long-tail keywords are considered a better long-term SEO strategy, even though they generally have a lower search volume.
Search engines are getting increasingly smarter, and that also allows people to type whole questions or phrases addressing the specifics of the information they need.
7. Get Active on Social Media
Make sure to post regularly on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. For each of these networks, write a customized description of your posts with the proper hashtags to attract the right audience to your website, service, and product. The type of posts and your tone largely depends on the network you’ve picked. For example, you need to keep it professional on LinkedIn and make it fun on Instagram.
You should be active on social media and post at least once a day. Ask your audience questions and make an effort to engage with them. You’ll be amazed by the turnout rate!
8. Optimize Your Website for Voice Search
Studies report that the use of voice search is growing year by year, with predictions that say more than half of the people with smartphones will use voice search technology in the year 2020.
Optimizing your site for voice search will certainly contribute to user satisfaction, aka better user experience, and will also help you get a higher ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
9. Invest in Visual Content
Visual content includes images, videos, charts, infographics, and other formats that rely on visual language. Studies show that by 2021, videos will bring up to 80% of traffic to your website. So, instead of investing in text and articles, make sure you incorporate videos into your content.
10. Make Sure Your Site is Reaching Out to the Right Target Audience
Your whole
marketing strategy will be doomed to fail if you’re reaching out to the wrong
audience. If you want results you should, first of all, find out who your
specific audience is, their age, their interests and preferences, and create
content that will satisfy their questions and needs. Use the help of
demographics and psychographics to get a firm understanding of your target
audience’s preferences.
About the Author
Athena Glaspy is a back-end web developer who uses tools to create web applications with clean and well-documented codes. Before Athena develops a set of code for a website, she collaborates with her clients to determine their needs and goals. Athena translates this information into technical requirements and utilizes the best technology to meet her clients’ demands.
During her leisure time, Athena loves to read books, cook food, and write articles about web development online.
