Future Of SEO: Predictions For 2020

Smartphones rule the Internet, and the trend only continues to grow in the coming years. According to surveys in 2018, around 52.2% of all the website traffic was generated through mobile phones. While 91% consumers prefer sites which load faster, around 50% demand mobile-friendly sites to fulfill business requirements, and 61% people don’t hesitate to leave a site that loads slow. This emphasizes the need of a fast loading, mobile-friendly, user-first website having quality content.

“38% people will stop surfing a website if the content and layout is unattractive”. - Adobe

This fact clearly states why websites should be updated so as to fulfill the parameters of effective user engagement such as increased loading speed, mobile friendly content, and optimized user intent.

To understand the User Intention on a website, knowing categories of content done according to User Intention proves to be helpful. Below are those categories:

• Informational - Serves informational content, wherever a question is being asked.
• Comparison - Explains the pros and cons of products being compared.
• Transactional - Allows easy transactions.
• Navigational - Allows smooth navigation through sites if a user intends to do so.

It is known that people read the content only if they are interested in or familiar with the subject. So, almost 97% people do not even click past the first page of search results if the content is not informative to the core. Hence, your website content should be of a high quality and informative that caters to the actual need of the user.

Moreover, to increase time-on-site and user-engagement, it is imperative to provide your audience with information in bite-sized passages since long text is monotonous and tiring, and concentration span of a human brain is around 8 seconds, studies say.

Human brain processes images faster than text, and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. So, visually engaging content should be an inevitable part of your site. In addition, since visual information in form of images, videos and infographics is attention grabbing, easy and fast to be understood; it makes it easy for a reader to build a connection. Visuals-and-text combination provides an enriching experience for the users. This type of content grabs the readers’ attention and entices them to focus for a longer time which eventually generates better ranking.

Web Stories (also known as AMP Stories), powered by Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology, are Snapchat/Instagram-like Stories, but with distinctive features. Web Stories are platform independent and can be easily shared across the web. They do not disappear like Snapchat/Instagram Stories. The users have control over their longevity.

With Web Stories, you can present information with images, videos and infographics. These Stories load with lightning speed, are mobile-friendly, and an immersive user experience which help increase the time-on-site and reduce bounce rate.

Web Story Builder is the first and only professional tool available openly on the Web with which you can get Web Stories on your website. The tool is developed by Visual Stories, a platform for online businesses, content creators and marketers to connect and leverage their businesses.