As the summer of 2019 wraps up, the digital marketing community continues to witness substantial changes. Google has released multiple algorithm updates this year and businesses are adjusting 
strategies to stay on top of the SERPS. This can become a major challenge for small businesses to keep up with. We’ve reached out to the top digital marketing experts to ask them what is most important in 2019.
Technical SEO
“We like to keep things simple. Make sure all your technical SEO is on point, then just publish content. Then keep publishing content. In our experience, 90% of your competition isn’t doing anything, so as long as you keep publishing interesting, valuable content, you’ll be great,” says Evan Johnson of Stay Calm Industries.
April Gilmore at clickfirstmarketing.com has sound advice for SEOs. “It might sound obvious, but on-page and technical SEO have both made a big difference for our clients so far this year. Make sure pages are loading quickly and focus on user experience. Sites that weve seen take the largest hits after algorithm updates have had major technical issues or offered poor user experiences.”
AI Automation
“AI/automation provides countless ways to improve SEO and other marketing offerings. The agencies who adopt this sooner rather than later will find themselves two steps ahead going into 2020,” mentions Chris Casarez of Exact Latitude.
“Its getting easier and easier to go through relevant data that can make a difference in creating a great product that customers love or one that doesn’t. Marketing, data, and product are getting more and more integrated, even in the functions of a single company,” states Angelo Sorbello of Astrogrowth. “Machine learning and AI, in general, cheaper software available on the cloud due to the increase of competition and lower cost of per user are revolutionizing what will make or break a digital strategy.”
“Digital Marketing is no longer just about posting content on social media. The Digital Marketing industry has seen revolutionary changes in the past few years. To build a strong following nowadays requires posting to multichannel platforms apart from traditional social media networks like podcasts, videos, apps, using stories feature on Facebook and Instagram, and more. The industry has also seen a surge in using AI and chatbots to produce more engaging and relatable content,” echoes Keith Heavilin of YellowFin Digital. “Producing personalized marketing content has become necessary for effective marketing. According to a survey, 90% of US consumers found it appealing. Video marketing has brought more consumers to brands than ever before. Consumers prefer this type of marketing because it’s informative and entertaining!”
Voice Search
“Voice search will grow rapidly in the coming years, it’s vital to optimize for how people ask questions when they speak into devices, as opposed to how they type out their searches. Adjust the SEO of your content to fit the more conversational tone of someone speaking,” says Alisha Chocha of Your Marketing People. Optimizing for voice search isn’t just a future investment. It will help your brand and generate traffic through Google snippets.”
Work With Reputable Agencies
“Right now SEO is just like the Wild West. As SEO is ran on the honor system where business owners give trust to a volatile industry that could dramatically change overnight from a software update or bug. Competitors can submit your URL to link farms that could impact traffic and jeopardize company website with penalties,” says Robert Montoya of Social Ubiquity.
“But this is in any industry where there is huge demand for a service with a flood of new SEO agencies who are learning along the way.
We see the search engine industry becoming stronger in the near future as new technology will be placed for these checks and balances between honest hard work and malicious intent to destroy.
In the meantime, SEO agencies who are worth working with are those who can build a strong presence through time for themselves.”
Optimize Your Blog Posts
“Local search marketing puts you on search engines, but it is search engine optimization (SEO) that keeps you on the search engines,” describes Francis Sabutey of Think Expand. “To rank higher and higher on search engines in relation to issues about your industry, you must start blogging and optimizing your blog posts for better search engine rankings.”
Low Effort, High Return
“2019 has seen remarkable improvements to SEO strategies. Some of the most effective SEO strategies of 2019 include:
1. Optimizing your article titles and headings
2. Improving user experience, which includes, ensuring your website loads quickly
3. Prioritizing your pages in website navigation
4. Updating and improving your existing content
5. Creating and posting high-quality content
6. Optimizing your content for voice search
7. Repurpose existing content
8. Linking to relative, authority websites
9. Building a variety of high quality and authoritative backlinks
10. Making your website responsive, i.e., mobile-friendly
11. Interlink your pages with keyword-rich anchor texts
There are plenty of effective SEO strategies that are low effort yet offer a high return. But these 11 will help get you on your way,” states Aakash Goyal of KitelyTech.”
Quality Over Quantity
“The most effective SEO strategies in 2019 are built around creating high-quality, creative content in various forms (text, videos, podcasts, etc.); building links organically from reputable, relevant websites; and investing more time in the user experience of your website,” says David McDowell of Liquid Interactive. “With algorithms and SERPs constantly adjusting, your strategy and measurement of success should be focused on quality over quantity. The days of manipulating results (without being penalized) are long gone. You need to implement long-term, research-based, authentic strategies.”
3rd Party Attribution Tracking
“Google and Facebook will continue their trend of releasing new digital advertising features, but the problem, is advertising within each ad network’s respective dashboards are not near fully accurate in reporting attributing and this is too close to your bottom line not to have an obsessive approach,” echoes Ben Wynkoop. “Looks towards 3rd party attribution tracking solutions such as Hyros True Tracking, but at the very least, continue to report ROAS according to Google Analytics and each ad platform’s figures, by also dividing your leads or eCommerce revenue (directly from the transaction source such as Shopify) by total ad spend across all channels.”
Invest In Your Team
Tyler Tafelsy believes investing in your team will help in 2019. “Many digital marketing agencies often work with more specialized firms or consultants to handle their SEO and PPC advertising. This even includes white-labeled client support work. However, it’s more and more too common to see these digital marketing agencies recruiting and educating in-house professionals to take on these roles. Investing in SEO training seminars, Google Ads certification courses, and educational programs has become an evolving trend in the digital marketing world – for both agencies and emerging professionals.”
