A lot of things have changed lately in the search engine optimization (SEO) landscape. If you follow the trends, your Google rankings can improve.
To stay on top of the game, you need to know some facts!
- What are the latest SEO trends?
- Which SEO techniques are in trend?
- Why is it important to know the SEO trends?
- How can you use the new SEO trends to your advantage?
Find answers to all the questions that are popping up in this guide.
Smart marketers have just realized how to dominate Amazon sales with voice search.
A huge percentage of Digital Marketing experts worldwide believe that this year will be the year of AMSO!
NB. AMSO means Amazon Search Optimization. Just like most of the searches you make on Google are informational, Amazon searches are transactional.
Based on Amazon’s sales figures, more than 20 million Alexa products have been sold on Amazon. And that implies that voice search would increase drastically from this year.
This is just an example of the latest SEO trends.
The point is you must be conscious of the trending SEO techniques to remain relevant and competitive in your industry.
While you’re creating content for your website or blog, don’t ignore the new SEO trends and expect big success.
From the look of things, Google wants to make sure users don’t leave its properties. As a result of this, it frequently adds more interesting tools and features to police the web and improve user experience.
If you can optimize your site within the scope of the latest SEO trends, there is a lot to gain from it.
Table of Contents
Latest and Best SEO trends
The best you can get from the SEO trends for this year, however, is to make Google your complimentary card.
But how is that possible?
You need to optimize your site with the latest SEO techniques. Get the most of Google by leveraging the following trending SEO techniques:
1. Optimize for featured snippets
Featured snippets are the search results that come with concise and straightforward answers on the search engine page (SERP).
They’re the first results that appear on the SERP when you search for something on Google. They contain short answers to your query and likely prompt no click.
This phenomenon is called a “zero-click” search.
“Zero-click” searches are not new but becoming popular year in, and year out.
As this is becoming a trend, more search queries are being answered directly on the SERP. And the position that “zero-click” searches occupy on Google is called “Position Zero“.
They appear a step above the results that rank #1.
And there’s no likelihood that the rate will go down.
Types of featured snippets
Featured snippets have been seen in five different forms on Google SERP.
They are:
- Paragraph or definition box snippets;
- The Table snippets;
- The ordered list snippets; and
- The unordered list snippets.
According to data made by Jumpshot in the chat below, more than half of Google searches ended up with zero clicks.
While Google is doing everything possible to retain users on its property, it steals and displays parts of your content on the featured snippets.
Myths Surrounding featured snippets
Because the featured snippets provide quick answers for searchers, most people think they reduce the number of clicks a post ranking on “position zero” ought to get.
For example:
If you search “how to rank higher on Google?”, the search result will return a featured snippet containing a list of steps to rank. Ultimately, the short information in the featured snippet is cool if you only need a quick one.
For what reason, would you still click the result to read more from the main source?
The answer is a big NO!
But don’t panic unnecessarily as what applies to you might not apply to others who have the same search query.
Zero-click searches, however, don’t mean working hard to rank above #1 on Google for nothing.
Google won’t bring you all the way to “position zero” to use and dump you.
Posts that appear in the featured snippets get more than 2X click-through rate (CTR) of what is in position one.
So, showing part of your content in the featured snippet doesn’t have any bad effect as you might think.
They aren’t just helpful for the average person though. Featured snippets give marketers a chance to beat competitors, boost conversions, and drive traffic right to their sites.
All you have to do is leave ways for Google to steal the best of your content.
That is, optimizing the keywords that get the better clicks on your site can make you appear in the snippet.
So, how would you know the keywords that get the most clicks?
Both Google Analytics and the search console can help you determine which of your ranking keywords to optimize for more clicks.
With that, your chances of getting into the featured snippet increase.
If you have been doing proper keyword research, you may have some posts already showing in the featured snippet.
To know if any of your posts appear in position zero, you can use the pro version of Moz’s Keyword Explorer.
Details will be provided to you in the next heading.
2. Get into Google SERP features at all cost
Google has added more new features to the SERP structure to improve user experience.
At the moment, you will find the following features on Google SERP:
- Featured snippet – Summarizes an answer that best fits what is googled.
- Local pack – shows results that are location-based.
- Review – This contains the total reviews or star ratings that a business has.
- AMP – This is otherwise known as an accelerated mobile page. It helps optimize a page for mobile view.
- Site Links – Include various links to more related categories or subcategories of the websites in the SERP.
- Video – Contains search results that have videos.
- Featured video – This type of video results appears at the top of the SERP.
- Video Carousel – This contains a list of scrollable video results at the top of the SERP.
- Top Stories – Contain a list of news articles that are related to a search that is made.
- People also ask –
- Image pack –
- Image –
- Featured image –
- Image Carousel –
- Hotel pack –
- Twitter – Contains Twitter cards showing the most recent or trending tweets related to the query.
- Instant answer – This type of answer is a very quick answer and it is sourced from Google’s Knowledge Graph.
- Knowledge panel – It appears on the right of the SERP basically to give background information about a search query.
- Shopping ads – Shopping ads contain product ads of businesses that use the Google Shopping Network or Product Listing Ads (PLAs).
- Adwords top – Good, this type of result is not an organic SERP feature. They’re paid ads that also display at the top of SERP.
- Adwords bottom – This serves as the same as the Adwords top. The difference is it appears at the bottom of the SERP.
- Flights – Contains a panel displaying results related to flights.
- FAQ – Frequently asked questions (FAQ) feature contains a list of questions and answers related to a query.
- Job search – This feature contains a few job listings related to a search query. They appear at the top of the SERP.
Gone are the days when Google SERP were ordinary plain links and meta descriptions.
For every search query you make on Google now, you’re likely going to be bombarded with more interesting information which is not limited to texts and links.
The SERP contains videos, images, news, articles, books, and maps which can provide you with the best information you need to make Google your final destination.
However, getting into the SERP features has become one of the important SEO trends for 2020. If you can take advantage of these trends, the result is jaw-dropping.
The SERP features are great opportunities to get the scoop on Google.
Oleg Triers observed:
Google users don’t read everything on the SERP. What they do is skim through the search results, from the top to the bottom of the SERP. But when you appear on the SERP features, your CTR will increase.
The SERP features can help you increase your brand exposure, organic traffic, rankings, and authority.
While most searchers search Google, they explore the SERP features to find the best answers. And if your website or blog can get into Google SERP features, it will stand out in the crowd.
So, which SEO techniques can help you get there?
Optimize your meta description
Optimizing your website for the SERP features, however, begins with your meta description. Ensure you don’t leave your meta description section blank for your SEO plugin or Google to determine.
Take your time to create a great meta description, containing your primary and latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords.
But note that, this strategy goes beyond adding just a keyword.
Ensure using the right keywords to make your meta description rich enough to get into the SERP features.
In order to achieve this, the best SEO trends for the year suggest you do keyword research.
Conclusion Best SEO Trends
This guide contains the most important SEO trends for this year to improve your rankings and visibility on search engines.
Google continually creates new frameworks to improve the user experience on the search engine.
By implication, sites that aren’t in the tide of these SEO techniques won’t be able to compete.
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