Regardless of all the resolutions that most people have already broken, we’re all still striving to figure out how to make 2020 our best year yet. Many of us start to read all the marketplace predictions out there and try to figure out how to best implement these strategies into our own business plans.

In 2019, we saw several major changes in the SEO world. Google’s BERT update at the end of October shook up organic search in a big way with its focus on understanding the search intent of users. As a result, what Google considers “relevant” on a website changed for millions of search queries. Of course, it’s in Google’s best interest to provide searchers with the most relevant results and content, and BERT represented a huge step forward in this regard. This focus on intent will continue into 2020.

With this prediction in mind, here are our ideas for the world of search and SEO in 2020.

Content Understanding

Google says it updates its algorithm thousands of times each year. That comes down to maybe a dozen updates in a day. Not all of those are monumental and Earth-shattering to all websites. But a few times per year, Google announces the update because it has large ramifications. Updates like BERT in 2019, or the Medic update in 2018, or Panda changed things a lot. What all these big recent updates share in common is that how content serves the user is becoming more and more important.

Quality content has always been important. But the BERT update took a step towards better machine learning and understanding search intent through natural language integrations. As Google’s search algorithm strives to better understand language, it wants to know how content supports the end-goal of the user. In other words, Google will more than likely gear more of its updates to understanding the content elements on a page to make sure it’s delivering relevant results to the user.

Content is more than just words, it’s the video, images, and other tools included on a website. It’s also likely that how content supports and interacts with itself, or the customer journey, will see more of an emphasis as well.

If you just have a page with a block of text and a lead form, Google likely won’t see this as quality content anymore. Pages need to have interactive tools, quality text, as well as the images, video, then the lead form in order for Google to see its value moving forward. Comprehensive content is key.

Action vs. Content

Quality user experience will be the name of the game in 2020. Google looks at metrics directly tied to these experiences and ranks sites higher when there are actionable items a user can take when visiting a website. Action items include clickable phone numbers to dial directly from mobile, being able to book an appointment directly from the website, and being able to mobile order right from the site.

We believe websites that make these customer interactions easy and actionable will see higher organic rankings. And it’s not just interactions on your website, but on profiles like Google My Business as well.

Having a good user experience will also mean more than just these tools. It goes back to quality content and what search engines quantify as quality content. Quality will become synonymous with the customer journey instead of just blocks and blocks of text.

Mobile-First Content & Function

An emphasis on mobile is hardly new. In fact, Google has been pushing search in that direction for some time, with mobile-first indexing now in place across the board. However, it’s no longer just about mobile-friendliness. It also involves looking at your site from a mobile-first perspective. More than half of all searches online originate from a mobile device. Google will likely continue to reward sites with higher rankings when they emphasize mobile-first design.

Mobile optimized elements will see more features in mobile Google searches, with elements like videos, images, tools, etc. So businesses and web administrators should consider adding action elements into their sites. For example, being able to book an appointment straight from the website, or modifying keyboards in form fields.

It’s very likely that those websites that do not increase usability will only hurt their business. Google wants to reward those who improve the user experience and focus on intent-driven actions across mobile platforms. And those that don’t conform to these standards will likely experience a drop in search rankings in the future.

Website & Online Automation

Artificial intelligence (AI) has moved well beyond science fiction into everyday reality. Thus we predict website automation will be an increasingly important trend in 2020 and into the future. You already see this kind of technology in the form of chatbots or AI-optimized ad campaigns. We’ll see many more business functions move towards AI and smart automation. Things like social posting, customer service, and even content creation could see adoption in 2020 for more and more businesses. Perhaps, we will even see AI move into branding.

With the advent of these types of integrations, we have to move carefully with AI so that it doesn’t undermine quality or expertise. Overconfidence and hubris with AI could easily lead us to damage our brands and, in turn, compel Google to punish us for our overreach.

Pay-to-Play

Over the years, we’ve seen paid ads creep further and further into the real estate of organic search results. And with searches pushing more and more attention towards ads, it’s likely other organic fields will see a more monetized content focus. Voice search is the new frontier, and we could see new paid ads placements for the first time in this venue.

Since 2016, we’ve seen different formats and new ways Google is serving ads to the general public. In some cases, 50% or more of the above-the-fold real estate is taken up by ads, not organic search results, on desktop. On mobile, it can sometimes be three screens before organic results show up. Unfortunately, we don’t expect this trend to change.

This doesn’t mean that organic search will go away. However, those with smaller budgets may need to put a greater emphasis on organic results and SEO so they don’t miss out on the web traffic that their competitors are capturing with paid ads.