Google and Yandex search engines are constantly improving their algorithms, and 2017 was no exception. A lot of changes have appeared, on the basis of which it can be concluded which ranking factors will be relevant in 2020 and in the coming years.
Not only specialists, but also owners of commercial sites need to pay attention to this in order to understand how well and correctly work is being done on their projects. And here are what ranking factors come to the fore in 2020.
Good content
One of the best investments you can make to improve your site’s search ranking is to create quality content. And the main indicator of this very quality is the relevance and completeness of the response to a user’s request. If in a nutshell, then:
- Recommended amount of informational article- from 500 words;
- The basis of the material should be a semantic core on the subject;
- The text should be diluted with multimedia elements (photo, video);
- And competently structure (formatting elements).
Over the past three years, quality content has consistently been among the top three ranking factors, and all leading players in the Internet marketing industry unanimously adhere to this opinion. And quality is a rather broad concept and also includes such aspects as spelling, structure (readability), formatting, inclusion of additional media elements, for example, images, in the article.
In 2020, the SEO Specialist can finally forget about the density of keywords and other relics of the past and focus on the usefulness of the content for the end user. This is already understood by many, which stimulates competition in the field of content and forces site owners who want to get more traffic to strive to create more and more high-quality texts.
Internal optimization and technical aspects
Even a beautiful design and high-quality content can be powerless if the site is replete with many technical errors and shortcomings. Common technical issues that must be monitored include duplicate content, broken links, quality of navigation, availability and correctness of robots.txt / sitemap.xml files, and a number of others.
If we talk about internal optimization, then this means:
- Work on creating or improving landing pages;
- Elaboration of title and description meta tags;
- Checking the availability and correctness of h1 tags;
- Closing unnecessary pages from indexing;
- The volume and quality of the html code
- Server response time and many other questions.
All this, of course, is the responsibility of SEO-specialists, and such work should be carried out by experienced contractors.
Quality links
Links have been and remain an important factor in search engine ranking. And in 2020, this is the same true statement as before. The formula in this case is simple: the more relevant and authoritative links appear on your site, the higher it will be ranked in the search. It should be understood that the search engine begins to take into account links about 2-3 months after they are indexed.
However, quantity is not equal to quality. And it is quality links that come to the fore. Even one relevant link from an authoritative thematic site can provide a better effect for your project than a hundred links from various kinds of low-quality pages.
Adaptation for mobile
Back in 2015, Google officially confirmed what they predicted several years ago – more requests are now being sent from mobile devices than from desktop computers. And in mid-October 2016, it became known that in the coming months the company is going to launch a separate mobile index, which will become the main one, and the desktop one secondary.
It is unlikely that any more evidence of the relevance of adaptive design is needed, and it becomes completely clear that the need to ensure the usability of the site on a small smartphone screen is critically important for owners of online stores and other commercial projects.
But the main point is precisely the convenience of users and the impact on conversion / sales. It would be foolish to expect good income from mobile traffic if your site is simply inconvenient to use on a small screen.
Behavioural factors (+ usability)
It is about the experience that visitors to your site get when interacting with it. Search engines define it as positive or negative due to certain metrics, such as:
- Time spent by visitors on the site;
- Number and depth of page views;
- Traffic sources and audience returns;
- Bounce rate (the bounce rate).
This also includes the so-called social evidence. That is, the activity with which the audience reacts to the content of your site on social networks – likes and sharing pages. This does not directly affect the ranking, but it is certainly taken into account by search engines as one of the factors.
The influence of such factors is more global than it might seem at first glance. Their quality affects not only the visibility of the site in the search, but also on such important things as the level of conversion, and hence the profit.
Attention on HTTPS
Security and privacy are key challenges for the online community in the near future. Major market players, including Google, are certainly interested in making users feel safe, and are actively working to eliminate possible loopholes for attackers.
For this purpose, a special HTTPS protocol was developed, which should replace the usual HTTP. Its difference from its predecessor is that the data is transmitted using a special cryptographic connection, which provides data protection from interception and distortion by encryption.
Everything is interconnected
One of the most common misconceptions related to ranking sites in a search is the idea that the site owner will be able to make several changes on the page or get more links and quickly get an increase in traffic or visibility by keywords. This is far from the case.
When determining the position of the site’s pages in the search results, Google and Yandex take into account hundreds of factors, and only their elaboration can provide the best effect. High-quality links will be of little use if the pages to which they lead are irrelevant and do not contain useful content. Similarly, even good content may not attract visitors if the topic is highly competitive, and without additional links there is nothing to do.
That is why the key to successful site promotion in 2020 is just the comprehensive work on the site and its improvement with the focus primarily on the benefit for visitors.
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