SEO, like all aspects of digital marketing, changes rapidly. It can vary greatly from year to year, or even month to month. This is why it’s so important for businesses to be up to speed with what’s going on in the world of SEO. Fortunately, we’ve compiled some information provided by industry experts to share with you.
Optimize for Voice Search
Over the past few years, voice search has become increasingly popular. By just speaking a few words, consumers can have easy access to related search results. And many industry experts say that keywords and pages should absolutely be optimized for voice search.
According to Danny Star from Websites Depot, “SEO in 2019 has two new paradigms: Artificial Intelligence and Voice Marketing. The evolution of AI makes it fundamental to invest in content that is as useful as it gets. Google’s goal is not only to provide the best answers but actually to predict user’s search intentions. An advanced level of keyword research applied to engaging, useful content is key. On the other hand, voice marketing is also changing the game on keyword research, as they need to adapt to the way users talk. Local businesses are the primary beneficiaries of this emerging type of marketing.”
And Daniel Lewis from Lewis SEO agrees with the importance of voice search, saying, “Search is a constantly changing universe and a lot of times people come to the party late. By the time the general populous learns about a technology being important, its been important for a while. The technology you should be dealing with because its already here is voice first. If you are not already optimized for voice first you need to get the lead out and get it moving!”
With more and more people investing in voice technology, like Alexa, businesses need to adapt to how consumers are conducting searches. Andrew Ruditser from MAXBURST explains, “With the development of Siri, Alexa, and many other personal assistance voice apps, businesses and services are going to have to change the way they present their content. For these voice applications to distribute their information properly, companies will have to change their content to more of an answering questions/problem solving type of presence. This will become a bigger trend in 2019 as the development of these products continue to expand.”
Know What Consumers Want
Search results pages are designed to provide the best possible resources related to the user’s search — and sites like Google are really honing in on providing the best search results possible.
Maria Cieslak from Onely says “Recently, we can see that Google is paying more attention to providing the best results adjusted to the user’s intent. They are aiming at presenting the results in an appealing way and this is why we can see more and more new feature snippets… We can expect more algorithm updates aimed at adjusting the search results to the users needs. As Google’s algorithm attempts to guess what the user’s intent is, this is also something that you should do. Browse the keywords your website has visibility for and determine if a given landing page provides the best answer for the query.”
And Bruno Souza at Black Swan Media Co. thinks that more and more people are using search engines to gain information and this is resulting in an advanced search experience. Souza says, “Your typical customer is becoming more and more independent. In the past they would’ve asked their friends for a company recommendation but now they can just check Yelp, Google, and other review sources. This means that moving into the future, having a digital marketing presence will be more important than ever. Some trends that were predicting are that Google will further monetize the Google Map Pack, turning it into another pay per play zone, SEO will become more simple with the release of advanced tools and testing masterminds, and that we still have a couple of years before voice search becomes the next mobile.”
The Right Content Matters
Creating readable content is important for any and all businesses. But it’s not enough to just create good content anymore.
Dan King at Fistbump Media explains, “I’m seeing a shift towards smarter content marketing. It’s not just about writing a blog post that’s optimized for search and gets shared once or twice on social media. Rather, it’s becoming more about how you relate and connect with people. The more brands connect and show their personal side, the better they seem to be doing across all digital channels.”
And Amanda Thomas from Konstruct Digital comments on the importance of ensuring your technical SEO is in check to make sure content can rank, saying “Don’t overlook your technical SEO. While content may be “king”, if your technical SEO is causing indexing or crawl issues, it will be very difficult to get that content to rank.”
Don’t Forget the Basics
As SEO becomes increasingly complex, industry experts urge businesses to not forget about the basics. After all, without a strong foundation, SEO won’t work.
Bobby Fischer at VisionFriendly.com thinks companies should cover all their bases, saying, “The top 5 things to include for 2019 if you are not already are improve site speed, structured data (Schema), on a per page basis, voice search content – question and answer, link audits of inbound and outbound links for domain authority and link frequency, [and] get Google reviews.”
Link building remains a vital part of SEO, especially for helping to increase traffic. Eric Hanson from Rank Envy comments, “In 2019 SEO continues to become more complex, with link building the most important and difficult factor. Adwords will continue to try to expand its reach by adding more and more real estate and options on SERPs. And as Social Media advertising becomes more congested, we predict efficacy will diminish to an uncertain degree.”
And Ryan Bednar from RankScience says links and traffic play an important role, explaining, “Modern SEO services require firms to be data driven in their approach to SEO. Gone are the days of just building links for customers. SEO Agencies really need to drive traffic to their customers AND help them convert that traffic into customers.”
Last but not least, Jason Wright from Marketing by Data comments on the importance of focusing on basic SEO, suggesting, “Get back to basics. Perfect on-page SEO can be all that is needed to rank an existing site. It is the foundation for everything else you do.”
SEO is essential for ranking on search engine results pages and these industry experts have some pretty great SEO tips and information. What do you think SEO will look like this year?
