Phil Ridley of Bug Doctor Media offers an overview of SEO best practice based on the latest updates from Google.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques and recommendations are always evolving. Especially for those of you who do your own SEO, it’s worth being aware of these five key trends in 2020.
If you’re not aware of mobile first, you probably shouldn’t be doing your SEO in house. As of July 1, 2019 Google moved to mobile-first indexing for all new websites and for all websites by September 2020. This means the Google search results will be generated based on an index generated from the mobile versions of websites. Make sure your website is mobile friendly.
With the focus on mobile usage, page load speed remains critical. According to Think with Google, best practice is under three seconds. However, even then as page load time goes from one second to three seconds, the probability of a bounce increases by 32%!
“Content is king” is a common catchphrase, but more specifically, video content is king. According to CISCO, video will make up 80% of all online traffic by 2021. It’s not just a question of having a YouTube channel and whacking a video on your website; it’s important to focus on all the aspects of optimising your video for SEO as well (a whole separate topic!).
Although optimising for typed searches should still drive SEO activities, it’s important not to forget the rapidly expanding voice and visual search functions, which are standard within the Google search app. Voice searches now make up 20% of all searches on mobile. To increase the chances of your website appearing in the results, include a question and answer in your content.
Visual search, whereby a user simply takes a picture with their mobile to find related content, is new but rapidly expanding. Google Lens (within the Google search app) can already identify one billion objects. For the pest industry, pest identification would be a key use – so make sure any pest images on your site are of good quality, towards the top of the page, and give them appropriate filenames and alt text.
Phil Ridley, Director, Bug Doctor Media
