(This post was selected as one of the top digital marketing articles of the week by UpCity, a B2B ratings and review company for digital marketing agencies and other marketing service providers.)
7 mins read
What has become the primary source of information?
Undoubtedly, the internet.
The internet has become an essential part of our current society.
Businesses have to build an online presence for themselves to survive in this digital world.
And, it should go without saying that to develop an online presence you have to be present on digital channels where your customers are.
However, just going online, starting a website or a blog isn’t sufficient to grasp the attention of your target audience.
Search engines are becoming ever more intelligent.
To maintain search relevancy, you always have to adjust to the ever-changing environment of SEO.
How has the world of search engine optimization changed in 2019?
What new SEO trends will gain momentum?
What SEO trends and techniques will expire, and which SEO strategies and techniques will work in the next year?
Here are a few SEO trends you need to know in 2019.
2018 was the year when Google finally rolled out its mobile-first index.
After all, mobile devices now account for 57% of all traffic. (Source)
As the number of mobile users is only going to expand in the future, it is extremely important to generate consistent content over all the platforms, from mobile to desktops.
However, when Google declares that it recommends mobile-first indexing, it does not state that it will not crawl your desktop version. When building websites, you must understand that Google crawls both, the desktop and mobile version.
It’s only that when Google figures out that you have a mobile-friendly website up and working, it chooses to show your website higher than the websites that aren’t mobile-friendly.
Hence, you should have a mobile-friendly website, or else Google will index something you can’t show to mobile users. And a great part of traffic will go right behind you.
Voice search is definitely growing at a very rapid rate. In fact, in the next few years, we’re all going to listen “Ok, Google”, “Hey, Siri”, and “Hello, Alexa” all around us every few minutes.
By 2020, the experts believe that 50% of all searches will be voice searches.
The most significant sign of voice search growth in 2019 is, clear and simple, the huge flow in artificial intelligence device sales. Tools such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Homepod, and Google’s Home, are selling like hotcakes.
Moreover, people are searching for local businesses and services through voice search devices at a remarkable rate.
Here is a deep-dive into voice search stats for 2019.
Therefore, businesses need to optimize perfectly for voice. If they don’t, they will be defeated by the ones who do.
Take a look at how this iPhone was being promoted solely based on the improved version of Siri. This is a strong enough indication of the growing importance of voice search.
Voice search isn’t the only SEO trend taking over the internet; videos to are. They are an ever increasingly popular entertainment and marketing tool, making them a valuable source of increased customer traffic. All you have to do is use them cleverly.
Online videos will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020. (Source)
This is huge.
As a result, videos will be a major marketing tool. Therefore, you have to think about how you can optimize video content to match the standards of search engines.
In other words, video SEO is one of the most important SEO trends in 2019. Get with the times or get defeated by the competition. (Read more about How to Rank YouTube Videos)
YouTube is the second highest ranking search engine, ranking only after Google. With 4 million views per day and 300 hours of video content being uploaded every minute, it goes without saying that Youtube video marketing is an arena that must be an important part of your marketing.
(Read more about Types of Marketing Videos you should Create)
Time and over, you have been asked to create quality content and there is no change to this. Content still remains one of the highest priorities in SEO.
Producing appealing and quality content can tell people what a website or business is about. It also indicates the readers that the organization cares about helping people, which is ideal for a brand’s image.
The competition for high-quality content is likely to be as rich as ever in 2019. If your website is content-dry, you’re not likely to make much growth with your SEO goals. You’ll need to definitely defeat your competition in the content field if you wish to rank above them.
When you think of content, your SEO content strategy should be to create content that drives, attracts and connects with people, and eventually solves their difficulties.
Blockchain has become a buzzword this year. While blockchain technology is well-known in cryptocurrency, it has been beneficial in many other industries as well.
Blockchain basically changes how data is tracked online. Its technology uses a distributed record that is a transparent and safe record of transactions that cannot be changed.
This change gives people more control over their information and provides businesses new ways to use data. Webmasters are investigating ways of integrating blockchain into websites and possibly monetizing it. Blockchain could also probably be used to verify backlinks.
Moreover, with blockchains, you can ensure that each click is valid, the days of bot visitors are over. This will lead to enhanced verified data, where sites won’t be able to get rankings artificially using automated clicks. It will guarantee high-quality traffic to boost your SEO.
Here’s a video talking about the importance of Blockchain not only as an SEO trend but as a marketing tool:
Search engine admires when you care about a visitor. In fact, the user experience is one of the most primary ranking factors in Google today.
The user experience can make or break a deal of any magnitude. Therefore, to keep gaining profit with your websites it’s important to ensure a silky smooth UX.
Engage users, inspire them, and always consider their requirements. We are not saying to turn your webpage into an overflowing place of enjoyment. Just be natural:
Websites with a greater user engagement will be preferred over the ones which are left by visitors within seconds of viewing the home page. It is only by a better user experience that visitors will patronize sites.
Establishing and developing your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, better known as E-A-T in Google’s search quality rating guidelines, is another important trend in 2019.
These three factors are the crucial parts of a quality website and the features of a content creator.
This means all websites must prove these three key factors related to online content. Websites which meet the E-A-T specification will do better when compared to those that do not meet these criteria.
We’ve always referred almost completely to Google regarding SEO. This is no accident, Google is the most preferred search engine by far. However, it may not be a great idea to concentrate only on Google’s ranking algorithms while putting together your SEO strategy.
Over-dependency on a particular platform or channel can lead to uncertainty and puts your business at risk. Google is not the single platform that users search on. Therefore, you should cover all the possibilities into your marketing efforts and compete for the remaining search volume from Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, etc. and make sure you maximize your overall traffic.
Moreover, Amazon’s search engine is gaining more importance on the web. It is not a universal search engine, but it is used for internal search within Amazon pages. Then, what’s the excitement about this?
More and more people directly visit Amazon to shop. 72% of shoppers now use Amazon to find products, with 56% indicating they usually look on Amazon first before looking at other sites.
These numbers show us that Amazon’s becoming Google of e-commerce. This indicates that if you sell something and you’re not on Amazon, you are losing out on all those 56% of latent customers. Therefore, if you’re a dealer, include optimization for Amazon into your SEO strategy.
SEO is usually considered as a matter of content creators and marketers. However, the fact is that it’s also something developers should think about. The method of technical SEO refers to ensure that your site is compatible with the criteria set by search engines.
Two important aspects of technical SEO that we’ve already discussed on include page speed and mobile-friendliness. However, another essential factor is site security. For example, Google now wants sites to be built using HTTPS, in order to be considered as ‘secure’ in the Chrome browser.
Furthermore, here are a few other elements that fall under technical SEO:
There are so many changes occurring in the world of search engine optimization. If you wish to take your SEO game to another level, it’s important to stay updated with the latest SEO trends.
What are your thoughts about SEO trends? Which trends are you most excited about? And, if you think there are more trends, do share those with us in the comments section below.
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Glad you like the post. Please email your queries to marketing@convirza.com. We will get back to you within a working day.
What a massive post! thanks for publishing such detailed post
Thanks, Alex Joseph. If you liked this article, I am pretty sure you will like this as well: Social Media Marketing Trends for 2019. Happy Marketing!
Thanks Sharayu Thakare sharing such a good post
Thanks for sharing the seo trends. I am a digital marketer and know the importance of the seo to promote the website. Your mentioned seo trends will work fine for me to boost the ranking of my blog. Keep sharing such helpful posts.
Thanks, Alkesh Gupta! Glad you found our work helpful. People who like this blog also tend to like this one: Social Media Marketing Trends for 2019.
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Thank you 🙂 Keep Visiting!