Major SEO Updates Of 2020

It is human nature to get better and learn with their experiences to make better decisions in the future. The digital world also follows the same pattern. Google also follows the same principle and tries to improve its services all the time. Google releases regular updates to fine-tune the search result of the internet. SEO (search engine optimization) refers to the process and factors of making a site fully optimized and favorable for better ranking. Besides some basic guidelines, Google releases frequent updates to improve its algorithms to ensure the return of relevant results and a better user experience. This year all types of businesses and economies were almost at standstill, due to the catastrophic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the pandemic, there were numerous releases of updates being rolled out by Google in 2020.

Google always makes some tweaks and adjustments to its algorithms, but we usually, realized and talk about major updates. The core updates bring some major changes to the existing feature or add a whole new block of features to the existing algorithm. The core updates are very critical for SEO experts and developers. They usually have some devastating effects on the rankings of websites and can change the whole landscape of SEO for them. There were some three core updates of Google rolled out in 2020. There were minor updates such as passage indexing and page experience etc.

Passage Indexing

Passage indexing is a very interesting and useful update from Google. It will help a lot of website owners and content creators to get their various pages to get ranked. This update affects the ranking more instead of indexing. Now every passage of text on a page will get reviewed and analyzed by Google to find out the most relevant information. This update will help a lot of websites to improve the ranking of their previously low-ranked pages. It will improve the optimization of the majority of web pages to rank better in search results. The update is expected to go live at the start of 2021.

Page Experience & Core Web Vitals

There was another update of 2020 with the name of Google Page Experience and core web vitals. This update also has some prominent effects on the ranking of websites. According to SEO experts, this update has brought some new factors to measure page experience along with already known factors of mobile-friendliness, page speed, HTTPS ranking boost, and penalties. New features include Google's new core web vital as well. The page experience update is believed to affect mobile search results more than desktop search results.

BERT Expansion

As we all know that BERT update was rolled out at the end of 2019 to get a better understanding of natural language. This year BERT has been expanded to every English query being searched on the internet. SEO updates are a major part of understanding and implementing the best strategies to optimize your site for better ranking. Ignoring these important updates can highly affect your SEO services and strategies. Either you are an individual or an SEO expert, you must always stay aware of these updates so you can offer the best SEO services for the client's website.