As we often start off saying in our SEO related blog – SEO is always changing – And 2020 is expected to bring even more changes to SEO.

Will voice search finally dominate?
Will link building still work?
Will content still be king?
Will people still talk about Rank Brain?

In this article we are going to list some things you will need to avoid in 2020 and aim to answer the questions often asked of SEO.

SEO Education will be key

With SEO changing on a rapid basis and daily fluctuations in rankings, it’s important to keep yourself educated at the highest level when it comes to SEO.

There are a number of ways to do this but the most simple is reading top resources such as Brian Dean or Neil Patel and testing, testing, testing, by putting into place the lessons you learn.

By doing this you will know what works and what doesn’t and be able to give yourself the best chance of staying ahead in the SEO race.

Not focusing on User Experience & Conversion Rate Optimisation

Google wants to deliver the best websites with the best user experience at the top of it’s results.

A bad user experience will see visitors clicking on your Google search result and then almost immediately bouncing back to the search results to find another website – This is known as “pogoing”.

By having well written titles and descriptions and providing a user experience that allows your website visitors to find what they need quickly – and important matches with their search intent – You will give a better user experience, which will help your conversions and could help your SEO rankings.

Ignoring brand queries

Google loves brands and even considered them the “solution” to differentiating between great SERP listings and poor SERP listings.
The way to optimise for Brand searches/queries falls under 2 parts and can be quite difficult to do, especially if you are a small business.

You will see brands doing this on TV where they often say in their adverts “search for ALT Agency” for example or their unique brand/product name.

This then is an organic way to drive traffic from TV to Google and increases the number of people searching for your brand term.
Another way brands relates to SEO is with anchor text in your website backlinks.

Without doubt you know you don’t want 1 million backlinks pointing to your website all for the same term, for example SEO Agency Birmingham, as that would be unnatural and over optimised.

What you do want to do, however, is to have backlinks to your website that don’t include keywords but include your brand name or term such as ALT Agency, as this is more natural and the way bigger brands such as Nike or Amazon for etc get their organic backlinks.

Ignoring humans and their intent

Again, this falls under 2 parts.

SEO used to be about writing content for search engines and saying the same thing 5 different ways – This is what would help get you ranking.

These days user experience is far more important as mentioned above and so writing your content for humans, in simple terms and not trying to stuff in keywords for the sake of it is what works best.

You want to deliver the best user experience – Do it naturally and don’t try to game the search engines.

The second part of this comes down to content again but also the intent behind the users’ search – Related to rank brain.

You need to think about the different ways’ users search for content and the intent behind it.

For example, someone searching for SEO is likely looking for SEO advice and guidance and touching on the subject at a top level.

Whereas someone searching for an SEO agency is likely looking for SEO services and looking to compare local SEO companies.

The piece of content that is answering “what is SEO” will not be relevant to someone searching for a local SEO agency and so that needs to be thought about and planned into your strategy – Different pieces of content for different search intent.

These are some simple SEO mistakes to avoid in 2020, whilst SEO can be very complex there are some core fundamentals such as understanding user intent, building a brand and giving a great user experience which will play a fundamental part to SEO for 2020 and beyond.