As the new year comes into focus, you may be taking stock of your successes last year and how you can build on them. Part of that tactic is exploring trends. Knowing what is bubbling up or around the corner can help you stay ahead of the curve and be in front of customers instead of trying to catch up with what they want and need. For businesses that focus their efforts on search engine optimization (SEO) when delivering content to audiences, there are several strategies they can implement in 2020, according to experts in the field. These trends involve truly understanding your customers and how they interact with your content and what they want from your business, creating content that is specific and valuable in helping them make good decisions for themselves, and focusing on how your offline world affects your online reputation and the role it plays in how you are ranked in search engines. Let us take a deeper look at these trends.
Talk To Your Customers And Understand Their Behaviors
Google announced its Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) technology last year. This neural network-based tool’s goal is to consider a word’s full context by looking at the ones that precede and follow it. In other words, it is trying to understand the intent in a search question.
What this means for businesses is that content will need to be written based on an audience’s intent instead of search strings. There will be a shift from keywords and a move toward a better understanding of customers. They want to know they can trust you and that you provide solid service. And by talking to them, you will know exactly what they are searching for and be the first business they turn to in a time of need, possibly earning a customer for life. This is key to a smart and holistic plan where instead of search phrases being at the center of it, your customers are. Consider the importance of having a clean and easy-to-navigate website that can provide content and answers quickly. Nowadays, there are several options available to audiences when it comes to information and service. You want to be the one business that anticipates their needs. People remember who was there for them. Be that type of business.
Relevant and Valuable Content Is The Intend
Understanding your customers, their search habits, and the intent behind those searches will help you create quality content for them in 2020. We have been hearing that content is king for several years, and that belief consistently remains because it is the truth. Good content will trump everything in the long run. It affects how you build your site to how you set up links. It can give you an authority in your customers’ eyes and in search results. Because of this, you should invest in hiring people who know how to write well, people who know how to turn your story and services into information that is pertinent to your audience’s expectations and examinations. Make it your goal to have the best content online within your specialty. In the end, the best pieces will rise to the top, people will trust your expertise, and your business will have the potential to grow.
Be sure that you are focusing on topics that cover a whole conversation holistically as opposed to concentrating on a solo keyword for your page’s content. Consider, too, how well the content translates to local audiences.
Your Reputation Means Everything
How much people trust you will be very important this year. Businesses with customer service issues and a bad reputation will have a difficult time attaining and maintaining customers. Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) are still important to Google and will remain so, and it will continue to evaluate businesses and those who publish content for them when it comes to ranking. In fact, some experts believe that if you do not have the proper credentials or expertise to cover certain topics, it will be hard to gain organic visibility.
Because of an on-going effort to combat fake news, trust and authority will be at the forefront of audiences’ minds this year. Remember when we mentioned having writers who can write well? While that is important, they must also be trusted and have credibility in the topics they cover. Businesses need to ensure that all content they produce is factual, complete, and high quality in terms of information and expertise.
Also, anything that happens offline will become more important. For example, any awards received, partnerships entered, or events held should be published online so that Google can better understand a business’ credibility and how it serves its community.
MDPM Consulting Can Help You With Your SEO Strategy In 2020!
At MDPM Consulting, we can help your business with an SEO strategy specific to your practice that will showcase your authority, expertise, and trustworthiness to your customers and patients. We are ready to help and offer guidance whenever you need it! If you have questions about content marketing in 2020, or if you want to discuss creating or replacing a website, please contact MDPM Consulting today at 972-781-8861.