Looking into 2020

As we approach the start of a new year, many businesses are looking to implement new growth strategies that will see them dominate their field in 2020. For Click Intelligence, the focus has always been on Link BuildingLink building is a process of acquiring links pointing to your website. These links are obtained by creating content, participating in social media or commenting on other blogs. and SEO, so where will this take the company? And what will local SEOLocal SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank on the 1st page of Google for a search term and geographic location that is relevant to your business. look like in 2020?

The Future of Online Marketing

James Owen, Co-Founder and Head of Search, believes that 3 main areas, in particular, will experience improvement regarding SEO practices in 2020, as the new year brings about the opportunity for change;

“2020 brings about the opportunity for improvement regarding SEO practices and results, and so as we head in that direction, I am predicting that there will be three main areas that experience just that: increased focus on UX and Conversion RateA conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that take a desired action on your site. optimisation, changes in SERPs, and AI. In 2020, I believe there will be an increased focus on UX (user experience) and getting those conversionA conversion is a desirable result on a website that leads to an action such as completing an order, filling out a form, or simply clicking on a link. rates optimised. Meanwhile, SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is what you might know as Google or Bing, and I predict SERPS will feature three main changes:

• SERP enhancement with snippets – Google will only be interested in rich snippets that add a visual layer to an existing result, such as good reviews and ratings.
• A continued invasion of SERPS by Universal Search Results – We are ready to welcome the challenge of the invasion of SERPS by Universal Results into 2020. The knowledge panelGoogle's Knowledge Panel displays snippets of information about a topic that you search for in a Google search. is becoming more informative and pulling more information from websites. An increase in the visibility of content across all Google properties (YouTube, Google maps, and GMB) is good, but it also brings about the challenge for people to click on your website. This will, therefore, be a huge focus for us.
• New types of Universal Results and SERP featuresGoogle SERP Features are a simple way to get the most out of your search results page. – As Google aims to make it easier for users, this will bring about new SERP features that might continue to add to the zero-click rates that have occurred this year. I believe there will be changes to how Google My Business works, which currently is free to use, and they will introduce new paid add-on features that will get pulled from the universal results.

Lastly, UX will play a huge part in 2020, and so will AI as it brings about more unique experiences for customers. AI is going to become more important in SEO to provide a better experience in SERPs; it will determine the ranking of pages a lot more easily, and so will become the norm for everyone, including SEO experts. “

Client Services Director Sam Morton also touched on some social marketing techniques when talking about the types of business trends to keep an eye on in the new year;

“As social advertising continues to increase, we should start to see quicker bridges for customers to connect to products. Currently, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest lead the way with offering shoppable posts, and this trend looks set to continue well into 2020, as platforms experiment with new ways for businesses to personalise their products to potential customers. Another growing social trend has seen businesses being more switched on to working with smaller, more relevant influencers to promote their content. Working with lots of smaller social influencers has produced more consistent results, rather than building a strategy around the top of the food chain, harder to reach industry authorities. For 2020, keep your eye on A.I.”

So, what changes are coming to technical SEO, and how can we prepare? Senior SEO Manager Tope Falade says the answer involves site speed, linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. and new growth strategies:

“The headline act for technical SEO in 2020 will be site speed (which goes hand in hand with mobile SEOMobile SEO is a term used to describe the optimization of a website to suit the needs of mobile devices.). The recent addition of the site speed report in Google Search Console will give site owners and webmasters a better perspective into the depth of their site speed woes, which in turn is likely to create a more competitive site speed environment with more of your competitors making the investment to be faster.

I expect to see new link orientated GSC notifications that will follow the introduction of the two new link attributes. It’s clear that with this move that Google are looking for more signals on how to weight and determine the value of links.

2019 has seen a more aggressive growth strategy from tools like SEMrush. In 2020, I expect to see more of the same, plus a few more tools trying to gain market share in the DIY SEO SaaS arena. Don’t worry yet, SEO agencies, I think we have a long wait before our jobs are at risk. Adoption of these tools will likely grow, but for the foreseeable future, the bottleneck will be that many of those inhouse marketers using the tools will likely lack the underpinning SEO knowledge to really get the most from them.”

Senior SEO Executive Mandy Baldwin says that the answer is more voice-based searches that will not only be long-tail keywords but also hyperlocal searches;

“Hyperlocal terms are designed to hit very specific locations (towns, streets, and spots located near well-known landmarks) rather than local SEO, which would normally stop at cities, districts, or regions. This will allow smaller businesses to compete against bigger companies based on a more focused localities search term. SERP features like featured snippets, Google’s Local Packs and Knowledge graphs will have a big impact in the upcoming year, with more than half of all searches now showing the ‘zero-click searches’ your business can be gaining footfall from your online presence without always seeing a spike in online traffic to your site.

Knowing the right keywords and showing Google the right entities is becoming more crucial than ever before. Think about your Google My Business account, reviews and ensure that you are ranking for the keywords that matter to your customers, in the location you want to be found for. Also, don’t forget to make sure you have a solid backlink profile; Google looks at locally authoritative links as well as domain authority.”

So, what are the top tips for content marketing in 2020? Visual content is certainly coming along in leaps and bounds, so does that mean video marketing is soon going to take over? Not according to Assistant Content Manager Bex Gawne;

“Looking ahead into 2020, visual content marketing is set to continue its steady rise as one of the most accessible content mediums. However, as we learnt at Brighton SEO, accessible doesn’t always mean it’s easy to read. As watching video content on silence has become the norm, think people on the bus scrolling through Facebook, how you use video captions is key. There’s so much content you can fit into your video captions, which not only boosts the enjoyment of the viewers but provide a platform to build your brand even further. Captions shouldn’t just be the words the actors or presenters are speaking. It also needs to set the scene, describe for the viewers the atmosphere, and even the tone of voice.”

2020 will also be the year for new Paid Advertising trends. PPC Manager Gerardo Yllescas believes that voice search will become the go-to for Pay-Per-Click Advertising in 2020, as voice assistants become a bigger part of our daily lives;

“There are many voice assistants to choose from, and all the big players in the search market are looking to grab some of the Voice PPC – Pay-Per-Click Market. Google, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa, just to name a few.  From mobile phones, speakers and gadgets, there are a plethora of devices to choose from.

Just as with how traditional typed keywordKeywords are the words and phrases that potential customers might search for to find your business. searches began, we are still in the early stages of voice search.  To many users, it is still a novelty, and to some, it is still “too intrusive” for their use; thus, why many users choose to turn off-voice search all-together. However, just as typed keyword searches, voice search is here to stay!  As these voice assistances grow in accuracy and user adoption, the Voice PPC Market will follow!  Voice PPC is in the prototyping phase for many of these voice assistants, but rest assured.  In 2020, the big players in the PPC Search market are hard at work to bring Voice PPC to you!”

According to Co-Founder, Simon Brisk, we can also expect more marketing techniques from Click Intelligence;

“A Core component for 2020 will be an increase in video content and Youtube increasing their market share.”

With the ever-evolving world of SEO practices and content marketing, it can be difficult to stay up to date with the latest trends that seem to be continually cropping up. And while there is certainly an abundance of changes that we can expect going forward into 2020, it seems that Click Intelligence is more than ready for them.

From everyone here at Click Intelligence, we wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!