These algorithms make the search engine smarter than ever. While these updates make life easier for end users, SEO experts and brands are forced to be vigilant to quickly integrate these new techniques into their digital marketing strategy.
Below, I have identified three key things you need to adopt to stay active in researching the 2020s.
1. PLEASE: Understand the Question Most Successfully
Last year, Google announced its most recent upgrade in five years: Bidirectional Encoder Representatives from Transformers, or BERT for short. BERT improves the search engine understanding of words and breaks questions. The goal is to bring the whole question - context and nuances included - instead of using every single question. BERT allows Google to match queries with accurate and accurate information.
As voice searсh is becoming more popular, it’s safe to assume that BERT is here to stay. Since they’re verbalized, users commonly phrase their voice queries in the most natural way possible. The algorithm is particularly helpful for breaking down the conversational language queries because of its ability to understand the nuances of the questions.
How do you optimize for BERT?
The answer is: you don’t. Many industry leaders warned the search community about the inevitable spread of BERT optimization articles. BERT has nothing to do with technical SEO, backlinking or keyword insertion. It’s one of Google’s steps to reward relevant, accurate content. My advice is to focus on crafting better content. Cover timely topics that your target market will find useful, increasing your authority as an industry expert.
BERT's advanced language processing capability enhances featured snippets, ensuring that position zero is occupied by the result that responds directly to the query. These snippets, as they become more and more accurate, gave rise to another trend this 2020: zero-click searches.
2. Zero-click surveys: quick responses for impatient consumers
In June 2019, almost 55% of all Google searches yielded zero clicks. This means that most users found the necessary answers on the results page and therefore did not have to visit different sites. Google uses snippets of classified pages that provide the most satisfactory answer to the query.
For web users, the prevalence of zero-click searches means that Google is doing a good job of making the world's information useful. And as consumers have become more impatient over the years, the convenience of not having to scroll through multiple web pages greatly improves your browsing experience. But for companies, it means that the SEO strategy needs to be strengthened. According to my experience, even if your site ranks high in searches, there is no guarantee that they will visit your pages.
While this trend may contradict your goal of driving more website traffic, your brand can still benefit from zero-click search optimization.
How do you win zero-click searches?
The best way to optimize for zero-click searches is to win feature snippets. Do this by applying structural data to your website. This is a standard format for labeling and organizing information on your web pages.
I would like to point out that structured data does not directly improve your search rankings, but does have SEO benefits. This makes your site more readable for search engines, helping crawlers break them down more quickly.
Zero occupancy also increases your online presence, even if not all users click on your site. Remember to include your company name in your meta tags, especially on blogs on the page, to increase brand recall. Featured snippets also generate the most clicks, attracting around 50% of traffic. Schema markup is the main tool in structured SEO. It uses three formats: Microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD. Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data because its scripts are relatively easier to add, update and remove compared to the other two.
In addition to the zero-click test, another example shows people increasing demand for speed, but things are taking a toll. More and more brands are producing videos as part of their content strategy.
3. Video for SEO: fast, fun and impactful
Google loves entertainment. And YouTube is the second largest search engine, the use of video for your content strategy can lead to lost sales opportunities.
In addition to improving your content marketing strategy, videos also have SEO value. Any form of rich media is worth sharing. When people share your video, it helps you build more backlinks, which can boost your rankings. Videos are also displayed in SERP snippets. You can use them to win the position to zero and drive more traffic.
How do you optimize your videos for search?
Our agency does this through social listening, keyword research and monitoring and checking out the “People Also Ask” section in SERPs to find out what people are talking about online.
Apart from having well-directed, engaging videos, don’t forget about the SEO aspect of your media content. YouTube automatically adds closed captions for all videos, but they’re not always accurate.
Check your video's transcript for typos and grammatical errors and enter some of the keywords you're targeting. Web crawlers are still text-based; therefore, you need to take advantage of the caption feature as much as possible.
These three trends - video SEO, zero click search and BERT - aim to improve your content, because today's consumers demand valuable and easy-to-find content.
Below, I have identified three key things you need to adopt to stay active in researching the 2020s.
1. PLEASE: Understand the Question Most Successfully
Last year, Google announced its most recent upgrade in five years: Bidirectional Encoder Representatives from Transformers, or BERT for short. BERT improves the search engine understanding of words and breaks questions. The goal is to bring the whole question - context and nuances included - instead of using every single question. BERT allows Google to match queries with accurate and accurate information.
As voice searсh is becoming more popular, it’s safe to assume that BERT is here to stay. Since they’re verbalized, users commonly phrase their voice queries in the most natural way possible. The algorithm is particularly helpful for breaking down the conversational language queries because of its ability to understand the nuances of the questions.
How do you optimize for BERT?
The answer is: you don’t. Many industry leaders warned the search community about the inevitable spread of BERT optimization articles. BERT has nothing to do with technical SEO, backlinking or keyword insertion. It’s one of Google’s steps to reward relevant, accurate content. My advice is to focus on crafting better content. Cover timely topics that your target market will find useful, increasing your authority as an industry expert.
BERT's advanced language processing capability enhances featured snippets, ensuring that position zero is occupied by the result that responds directly to the query. These snippets, as they become more and more accurate, gave rise to another trend this 2020: zero-click searches.
2. Zero-click surveys: quick responses for impatient consumers
In June 2019, almost 55% of all Google searches yielded zero clicks. This means that most users found the necessary answers on the results page and therefore did not have to visit different sites. Google uses snippets of classified pages that provide the most satisfactory answer to the query.
For web users, the prevalence of zero-click searches means that Google is doing a good job of making the world's information useful. And as consumers have become more impatient over the years, the convenience of not having to scroll through multiple web pages greatly improves your browsing experience. But for companies, it means that the SEO strategy needs to be strengthened. According to my experience, even if your site ranks high in searches, there is no guarantee that they will visit your pages.
While this trend may contradict your goal of driving more website traffic, your brand can still benefit from zero-click search optimization.
How do you win zero-click searches?
The best way to optimize for zero-click searches is to win feature snippets. Do this by applying structural data to your website. This is a standard format for labeling and organizing information on your web pages.
I would like to point out that structured data does not directly improve your search rankings, but does have SEO benefits. This makes your site more readable for search engines, helping crawlers break them down more quickly.
Zero occupancy also increases your online presence, even if not all users click on your site. Remember to include your company name in your meta tags, especially on blogs on the page, to increase brand recall. Featured snippets also generate the most clicks, attracting around 50% of traffic. Schema markup is the main tool in structured SEO. It uses three formats: Microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD. Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data because its scripts are relatively easier to add, update and remove compared to the other two.
In addition to the zero-click test, another example shows people increasing demand for speed, but things are taking a toll. More and more brands are producing videos as part of their content strategy.
3. Video for SEO: fast, fun and impactful
Google loves entertainment. And YouTube is the second largest search engine, the use of video for your content strategy can lead to lost sales opportunities.
In addition to improving your content marketing strategy, videos also have SEO value. Any form of rich media is worth sharing. When people share your video, it helps you build more backlinks, which can boost your rankings. Videos are also displayed in SERP snippets. You can use them to win the position to zero and drive more traffic.
How do you optimize your videos for search?
Our agency does this through social listening, keyword research and monitoring and checking out the “People Also Ask” section in SERPs to find out what people are talking about online.
Apart from having well-directed, engaging videos, don’t forget about the SEO aspect of your media content. YouTube automatically adds closed captions for all videos, but they’re not always accurate.
Check your video's transcript for typos and grammatical errors and enter some of the keywords you're targeting. Web crawlers are still text-based; therefore, you need to take advantage of the caption feature as much as possible.
These three trends - video SEO, zero click search and BERT - aim to improve your content, because today's consumers demand valuable and easy-to-find content.
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