SEO techniques for 2020
Use the Inverted Pyramid Style of Writing
This method means giving away the most valuable information at the top of the article, with less important information appearing below.
Readers that scan articles rarely reach the bottom of the page, so it makes sense to give them what they want as soon as they land.
Improve titles and descriptions to boost CTR
Two main things affect your click-through rate (CTR):
- Title tag
- Meta description
These are the two HTML tags that show up in the search results and they’re all you have to win to click.
Sometimes people just won’t click on your site in the search results. And therein lies the opportunity:
- Find the keywords for which you rank on the first page
- Look for ones that have a low CTR
- Improve the title tags and descriptions of the associated pages
Create SEO optimized landing pages
According to an SEO research firm, 44% of clicks for B2B companies go to a homepage, not a landing page. Sure, the homepage is important, but a landing page is where you can initiate a strong relationship.
A well-designed landing page can improve your lead generation and sales. The more landing pages you create, the more gateways you open up for incoming search traffic.
Increase Website Speed
Google has launched a number of SEO tools to help improve site speed, including:
- PageSpeed Insights to help developers improve site performance
- Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to boost speed on mobile sites
- Test My Site to help gauge how responsive (or mobile-friendly) a site is, which includes speed as a parameter
Master Internal Linking
Internal linking is one of the most underrated SEO tactics that there is. As SEOs, we’re often all too quick to chase after earning new backlinks before making sure that the ones we already have are working as effectively as possible.
One impactful activity you can carry out is improving internal linking based upon your site’s most linked-to pages.
Find Your Competitors’ Best Performing Pages
When you take the time to figure out what’s working for the websites you compete against on the SERPs, you can take your analysis to the next level and understand why this approach is working before using this insight to inform your own approach.
Find your competitors’ best-performing pages so that you can develop a picture of where their organic traffic is coming from, and what it’s being driven by. Analyzing your competitors’ top pages can point you in the direction of things like:
- A content/keyword gap
- A link gap
- An opportunity to improve your existing content
- Keyword cannibalization
Headlines and permalinks
The headlines for your articles should be under 55 characters to ensure their complete visibility in SERPs. Make sure they’re snappy, attractive and as descriptive as possible (this is often an impossible balance). Just stay away from clickbait headlines, do not promise something that the content doesn’t deliver.
The permalink (or URL), which you can normally alter in your CMS even after it’s been set automatically, doesn’t necessarily have to match the headline exactly. Google has stated that you can use three to four key words that you should put the most important keywords first.
