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SEO in 2020 – Ranking Websites on Search: 4 ASTOUNDZing Tips

Jan 14, 2020 | Ecommerce, Search Engine Optimization

As we enter a new decade of Search Engine Optimizatoin (SEO), there’s a lot to be excited about for 2020. With Google just releasing their first Broad Core Algorithm, it’s already shaping up to be a wild year. To help navigate the turbulent landscape of SEO, below are ASTOUNDZ’ keys to succeed in 2020.

Ranking Websites on Search: Our 4 Key Tips

1 – Navigation: Drives Rankings & Conversions (When Done Right!)

As part of the eCommerce website and SEO work ASTOUNDZ has done over the past several months, the value of navigation has become very clear. This is because a website with good navigation allows:

  1. Users to get where they want, with as little effort as possible.
  2. Search engine spiders to more efficiently crawl a site.
  3. Stronger internal linking signals for search rankings.

While points 2 & 3 are very focused on having strong SEO, ASTOUNDZ has found that being able to accomplish the first point – getting users to where they want – the most important. This is especially true on eCommerce sites. Take some of the new eCommerce websites we’ve launched recently:

Mtyci Website Design By Astoundz

More Than You Can Imagine (MTYCI)

A luxury designer store in Houston, TX that desperately needed a site to provide a good experience for the large volume of products they sell. ASTOUNDZ developed a mega-nav and custom product categories to allow users freedom in choosing how to shop their online store. In addition to this, ASTOUNDZ optimized their key category pages for ranking on valuable keyword searches, so users can land on the website and immediately begin their shopping experience.

Spa New Website Design By Astoundz

Society of Performing Arts Houston (SPA Houston)

As the largest nonprofit presenting organization in Southwest Texas, SPA Houston needed a website that allowed users to browse events by date or performance type. ASTOUNDZ built a ticketing system that incorporated a calendar, making it very easy for the user to control their ticket buying experience. 

With our focus on navigation and user experience, both sites are now driving organic conversions at a higher % than before. 

Bonus Tip: Google crawls and indexes websites on a mobile-first basis. If your navigation is not functional when on a mobile device you risk having some pages not being crawled and indexed by Google until it crawls the desktop version of your site.

2 – Text Content: Not Sexy, But Extremely Necessary

In SEO, everyone loves to innovate and be the first to discover new ranking techniques. But, there’s one thing that still works really well. Having good text content on your website. This isn’t to say that you need a wall of text copy to succeed. But we continue to see websites failing to rank well that lack text content. At ASTOUNDZ, we look to utilize types of content to create pages full of text copy, without being overwhelming for the user. For example:

  1. FAQs – Great for building keyword density to rank higher and to capture featured snippets and people always ask features. 
  2. Testimonials – User-generated content that also helps establish trust, which drives conversions.

These are two types of content that are easy to design into a page, provide users value, and help to optimize for search by adding text content. Plus, with the proper use of schema, these types of content can enhance the look of your search results even more. 

3 – Rank Smarter, Not Harder!

That feeling of ranking #1 for single keyword searches, like ‘weather’ and ‘time’, can be awesome…but is it smart? Let’s look at these search results:

Screen Shot 2020 01 14 At 10.12.08 Am
Screen Shot 2020 01 14 At 10.12.31 Am

What are the two common themes between these screenshots? The featured result ahead of the first organic result. This is called a no-click SERP – meaning that traffic is not being driven to sites ranking. In fact, we can see weather.com combatting this by buying ad space, ensuring they always show up first when someone searches for ‘weather’ on Google. It’s far better to rank on searches with slightly lower search volume, but higher click-thru-rates (especially ones that drive conversions). 

4 – Stay Up-to-Date with Google

The January 2020 Broad Core Algorithm update marked the first major algorithm update that Google notified the world via Twitter both pre- and post-rollout: 

In addition to this, they have also announced how they are changing the desktop experience for users:

Google is basically saying – follow us for all the breaking news on how our search engine works. And so, I highly recommend for everyone to give their Search Liaison account a follow to stay in the know.

Need SEO Help for 2020?

These are some of the main tips and insights for succeeding in SEO for 2020. If your website just simply isn’t ranking/driving the organic traffic it needs to be, give us a shout. SEO is complex and there could be a wide variety of reasons why your site isn’t performing. Our SEO experts are here to help and we wish everyone a happy new year!

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