Google brings new updates all year round that impacts and changes search engine optimization techniques. With the beginning of 2019, webmasters are on the hunt for new ways to surge ahead of their competitors in terms of ranking and traffic. Finding top SEO Trends predicted by top influencers and experts would assist you to develop a successful strategy to remain ahead of the game.
Fortunately, we have put together a list of the top 5 SEO Trends that will dominate 2019. Here is the list for you
1. Optimize For Voice Search
There has been a steady rise of voice assistants usage in the web search around the globe. With popular voice-controlled technology such as Google Assistant, Siri, and Echo at the place, the voice assisted searches are set to increase to 30% by 2020 globally according to reports.
The voice search has been an important topic of discussion in the SEO industry for some time now. The websites optimizing for this trend are getting favourable results in the search result. This discussion is set to get more impetus and development as we move on in 2019 as predicted by experts.
Studies conducted by experts showed that voice-controlled searches show results from website ranking high in the SERPs or the sites ranking with their rich snippet “0th position.” Optimizing your website content for a voice result with questions and answers, other than putting FAQs is essential now. Adjustment in the target keywords reflecting human speaking behaviour, use of long tail keywords, selecting accurate heading with hierarchies and direct question in the content.
Voice assisted technology and search would continue to shift SEO practices and methods in 2019 and beyond.
2. Mobile-First Indexing
Mobile-first indexing was one of the most talked topics in the SEO world in 2018. Mobile-first indexing means Google uses the mobile version of your site’s pages for indexing and ranking apart from the desktop version.
Migrating of sites to mobile-first indexing started in March 2018 which brought changes in SEO practices within the digital marketing industry. The process of mobile-first indexing went throughout the year with SEO expert doing their work.
This process is set to continue even in 2019 focusing primarily on desktop and mobile version by owners. Going forward the website owners with mobile friendliness, responsive design, and high mobile page load times are set to gain high ranking in SERPs than others.
3. Page Speed
As shown in various studies, the high page speed matters on the internet today. More than 50% of visitors expect a website to load within 2 seconds making the page load time a crucial factor for user experience. SEO experts have reiterated this in the digital marketing conferences held last year. Having a fast loading site will remain significant this year as well.
As we know, desktop page loading time has been an SEO ranking factor for a long time now. With the introduction of mobile page speed, this has been added as one of the ranking factors now. The last year’s July “Speed Update” from Google is a reminder that speed would remain a crucial factor even in 2019.
Earlier, Google’s PageSpeed insights were evaluated based on a few technical parameters of a desktop version. Now, both desktops and mobile versions are taken into consideration in the optimization and speed. Speed metrics take data from the Chrome User Experience database of real users changing the SEO game.
4. Brand Reputation
Reputation is a metric to assess how your business is perceived by users on the internet not necessarily the popularity of your brand. The trustworthiness of your brand among the users has a slight impact on the way Google show your pages in the search results. As a website owner, you should care and work to maintain a healthy reputation for your brand online.
A proven SEO method to gain the trust of Google is through strategic backlinking from quality and relevant sites. Any external link that links back to your website is a vote of your legitimacy. The method of gaining backlink is significant in SEO, but difficult for those newer on the game.
What matters most is the direct visits revealed in the SEMRush Analysis and evaluation. People prefer to visit popular brands or sites offering reliable sources of what they are searching for. Hence, it is vital for your business to gain a reputation in the niche industry. The more direct visit you are getting on your site, more possibility of ranking high in SERPs.
Another way of creating backlinks is to build your brand image by increasing mentions of the name on the web – social media, forums, and community.
5. Understand User Intent and Audience
Understanding the user intent and audience would be more important ever in 2019 according to experts. Every set of an audience has different tastes, interest, and preference. Google will reward anyone who can live up to the expectation of the audience.
Developing quality contents according to the expectation of users will help in creating engagement and spend time on your site. Make your content crisp, engaging and simple to explain things which your visitors require. You must develop contents to answer questions or queries of real users not revolving around a keyword.
Tomorrow’s high ranking sites on Google will be those serving the audience well, not necessarily on specific keywords. The time has come to stop matching your keywords but focus on the user and audience intention.
Conclusion: These are just a few SEO Trends which we think would dominate the digital marketing world of 2019. What are your prediction and assumption in the year ahead? Let us know with a comment.