Web & SEO in 2019 & 2020 – A Summary

Hi everyone,

It’s been a busy year so I’ve not had too much time to provide general updates about the world of web & SEO this year. I’ve been so busy with new and existing clients this year that it’s been a bit of a whirlwind.

I thought I’d provide a quick update of the bits of ‘web’ news that have caught my eye this year. There’s always lots happening and changing in the web design, web development and SEO world, but this is just a quick summary of the main things that affect my clients.

I don’t go into too many details here, as there are plenty of ‘ultimate guides’ out there. This info is just a taster, in case you want to dig a little deeper. If you do want to know any more about the things I talk about, please get in touch and see how I can help with your website and search rankings.

Google used to look at domain authority based on links. This has been gradually phased out in terms of importance. Google now looks at E-A-T; Expertise, Authorativeness and Trustworthiness.

Google is therefore looking to reward websites where:

1. the author is a subject matter expert, with well-written content;
2. if the site claims to be great, it actually is. Google looks at external resources and references to judge this, and;
3. the site provides the product or service that it claims it does.

Each one of the above points merge into eachother a little.

You will all know about Siri, Alexa, Google Home and so on. When they first came out, people were unsure as to whether they would take off, but they really have in 2019.

In addition to voice search, visual search is now coming in to play. With Google Lens, you can now use Google along with your phone camera to take a picture of an object and Google will find it for you. Amazing stuff.

This all affects the way we optimise our websites, so it’s something to look out for more and more.

How do I optimise for visual search?

At Go Web, I look at optimising my clients images as best I can, ensuring the basics such as Alt tags, descriptions, title attributes are in place, along with descriptive file names. If you take an image on your smartphone and upload it directly to your website, it’s going to have a random name ie. 123456-7890.jpg. This is no good. You need to ensure you save out your image and change the file name accordingly. That’s just one quick example.

Search intent is a major change to Google’s core algorithm and is something that will be even more prominent in 2020.

Search intent is the way in which Google defines exactly what the user is searching for. For example, if I just type in “Apple Watch,” am I looking for information about it, or am I looking to buy one?

When all is said and done, when it comes to SEO, great content and valuable backlinks are still the most important general aspects. To rank well in 2020, keep optimising your website for users, to make it as good as it can be.