One of the most important aspects of search engine optimization is the fact that change is continuous. Since the goal is to gain an edge on the competition and the search engines themselves are always changing the way they rank pages to try to deliver what users are looking for more quickly, your best strategies will have to adapt from year to year. This is true whether you’re an experienced SEO professional working with clients or an entrepreneur setting up a presence for a brand new company. If you’re getting attuned to the state of the industry as you plan your approach to the back half of 2020, here’s what you need to know.

Getting Ahead of the Curve on New Tech

New technology is one of the biggest causes of change to the best practices and cutting edge techniques that give you an edge when seeking the top search results for important keywords. This year, the buzz is centering machine learning and AI, with a special emphasis on how they help you get insights from data faster and with more precise predictions. Many new apps for analysis are touting the benefits of these insights, and key advertising platforms are even building in more granular data and the tools to use them right on their service. On the other side of things, it’s time to make sure your metadata like title tags are properly optimized, because machine learning tools can quickly survey parts of the page that regular users might pay less attention to, and if the algorithm is feeding them results, that makes those pieces of data important to your overall success.

Optimize Your Page Load Speed

The faster your site loads, the more traction your other optimization will get. There are a few reasons for that, not the least of which is the way mobile-friendly optimization that includes load speeds on various devices can impact the likelihood that users will not only browse your information but also the likelihood that they will navigate to multiple pages on your site. Both of these are important to your overall page rank.

Audit Links More Frequently

Out of date links can hurt your page ranking, and the internet is an ever-changing place. That means sometimes your old content can start to work against you because someone else has pulled a page or reorganized their site structure, moving URLs around and breaking them. In the past, many firms only audited once or twice a year if they did it at all. Think about stepping that up to every four months or even every quarter to get the most out of your SEO, so you can keep dominating the top results on all your keywords.