SEO in 2020 both has and hasn't changed.
Let me explain.
In 2019, there were three core algorithm updates.
One in March, another in June, and the final one in September.
And do you know what happened in each one of these updates?
Probably not.
But I can guarantee you that 99.99% of people watching this video don't either.
And it's not because the updates weren't important.
It's because they didn't affect the fundamental principles of SEO success.
So rather than searching for the latest EAT hack or trying to optimize for BERT, you should
focus on the three most important things that will determine the fate of your rankings.
And that's what we're covering in this video today.
Stay tuned.
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Google's algorithm is always changing.
But the one thing that hasn't changed is what the algorithm is trying to do.
Google's job is to provide the best search results for any given query.
They need to find pages and rank the ones that best match and serve the user's intents.
And to figure this out, they use hundreds of different ranking factors.
So there's really no point in chasing algorithms.
Instead, our job as content creators and marketers is to show search engines that our pages deserve to rank.
And the three things that will determine whether you rank or not are content,
backlinks, and indexation.
Let's go through each one of these.
First and arguably the most important thing in SEO is content.
No matter how prolific your writing skills are, you won't rank unless you've gotten your content "right."
And by "right," there are a few major things to consider.
First is search intent.
Search intent means the reason behind a searcher's query.
To figure this out, just do a search in Google for your target keyword, and look through
the titles of the top ranking pages.
From these, you should be able to figure out the three C's of search intent.
The first C is content type.
Content type can usually be categorized into blog posts, product, category, and landing pages.
The second C is content format.
And this applies more to blog posts and landing pages.
A few common blog formats you'll see are "how-tos", step-by-step tutorials, list posts,
and opinion editorials.
For a landing page, that might be something like a tool or calculator.
And the third C is content angle, which often depicts the "benefit."
It's basically your hook as to why someone should click through to the page.
Search intent today is more important than ever.
And if you want to rank high, you'll want to match the type, format, and angle of other top pages.
Second, make sure you've covered the topic in full.
This doesn't mean that you have to give every last detail on the topic.
For example, if you're writing about a topic like "the best headphones," you don't have to
mention every single manufacturer and/or model.
Instead, look at what the top ranking pages are talking about.
So for "best headphones," you'll see that TechRadar has organized their post by
"best [type] headphones."
Like "best in-ear headphones," "best on-ear headphones," and so on.
See the article from Digital Trends, and they've followed the same or at least very similar format.
You can also use Ahrefs' Content Gap tool to see common keyword rankings
among the top 3 to 5 pages.
Just enter the top ranking URLs here, which I've already done and run the search.
And now that we can see keywords that the top pages rank for, we can extract subtopics
and create a thorough page to maximize search traffic
So I might want to talk about budget headphones as well as the best portable headphones
and categorize my post that way.
Finally, make sure you get the on-page stuff down pat.
Things like titles, URL slugs, and heading tags are basic things in on-page SEO, but they're important.
Rather than going into the details, I recommend watching our full on-page SEO checklist tutorial
which will walk you through all of the important steps.
The second thing is to continue focusing on building backlinks.
Links have been and still are one of the strongest ranking signals.
And if you want to rank for anything remotely competitive, you'll need to build them.
Now, while you might be searching for new and revolutionary link building tactics in 2020,
my recommendation is to stop.
Things like broken link building, the Skyscraper Technique, and guest posting all work really well.
What doesn't work is when you copy other people's templates verbatim.
By doing that, you're essentially putting yourself in a box with hundreds of other people
sending the exact same email, which probably won't yield the best results.
Try and provide value to the person who's receiving the email to increase your chances of getting links.
We have an awesome playlist on various link building strategies, so if you're relatively new
to link building or struggling to build quality backlinks, I highly recommend watching those videos,
choosing a strategy for your pages, and executing.
Alright, the final piece to ranking is indexation.
Search engines crawl, parse, and store information in a database called a search index.
End users are then able to access this information using Google search.
So if your pages aren't indexed, then it's impossible to get your site or pages discovered in search.
To check if your site is indexed, go to the Coverage report in Google Search Console
and you should be able to see which pages Google has indexed.
Also, if you haven't submitted a sitemap, then you can do that here, too.
Now, if you don't have Search Console setup, go to Google and search for site:yourdomain.
Hopefully you'll see most of your pages there.
If you're seeing zero results, it means your site isn't indexed.
If this is you, there are three things you should look for.
First, make sure you haven't unintentionally noindexed all of your pages.
This often happens with redesigns where developers will noindex an entire site during development
and forget to switch it back when migrating.
Just open the source code on your homepage, and search for noindex.
If you see it in your meta robots tag, then you'll want to fix that.
Second, make sure you're not blocking Googlebot or all user agents in your robots.txt file.
Just go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt
And if you see something like this,
it means you're blocking all bots from crawling any page on your website.
And third, check Search Console for a manual action.
You can do that by clicking on Manual actions in the sidebar.
Fix whatever it is, and submit a reconsideration request.
Now, if you have specific pages that aren't being indexed, then you likely have more of
a technical SEO issue.
First, do the same checks that I mentioned, like making sure you didn't noindex the page.
Another reason can be if you're automatically generating millions of indexable pages.
These are most likely going to be low-quality and will affect your crawl budget.
Some examples are forum profiles or faceted navigation issues on ecommerce pages.
There are literally an endless number of things to check for if your pages aren't being indexed,
but these are the most common.
Bottomline: if your pages aren't in Google's index, your SEO future in 2020 or even 2222
won't be very promising.
Now, while things like BERT or using Python to automate SEO tasks might seem exciting,
prioritize and don't lose focus on these three things
that are actually going to get your pages ranking high.
Think about it like this.
You don't need to know how running shoes are made in order to become a better sprinter.
You need to strengthen your core muscle groups,
practice the fundamentals like starting, accelerating, and finishing.
Most importantly, you need to get out there and compete with others.
In the same way, SEO is all about fundamentals.
Focus on the things that matter most rather than chasing shiny tactics from headlines
claiming SEO has completely changed.
Now, I'd love to hear from you.
Do you think that SEO will be more or less the same in 2020 vs. last year?
Let me know in the comments and if you enjoyed this video, make sure to like, share and subscribe
for more actionable SEO tutorials.
So keep grinding away, stay focused, and I'll see you in the next tutorial.