For those who are not in the industry, the term ‘SEO’ might sound a little like a boogeyman: a mystical being who has unimaginable control over people’s lives. In a way, that’s not far from the truth. Search engine optimization continues to dominate the field as a marketing tool: an average firm in 2019 is expected to reserve 41% of the marketing budget for online optimization, and this number is expected to grow to 45% by 2020.
How does this affect you? As you can see, companies are allocating larger resources to their online presence and search engine optimization, and this might include your competition. Whether you’re an international firm or a local business, it will hurt you to not focus on your SEO strategy for the upcoming year. You cannot afford to be left behind in the game, as it can affect everything about your business: from the amount of clients you attract to the attractiveness of your brand in comparison to your competition, and more.
Furthermore, the catch is that even if you do have an SEO strategy, you have to stay up to date with the trends, or you’ll definitely be left behind. Metrics from 2016 might not even apply today: after all, Google updates it’s search algorithm 500- 600 times in a year. These major and minor updates are aimed at improving the quality of the search results: so, if your goal is to show up in the first page of search results, you need to be on top of these updates.
All these algorithmic changes are aimed at a primary goal: providing business a platform to market themselves while ensuring maximum customer satisfaction and user-friendliness. That’s where the three pillars of SEO come into play: Content, Authority, and Indexed Age. Want an SEO strategy that will stand the test of time? Focus on these three: having quality and relevant content, delivered through a credible and reputed medium, with frequent updates.
So, what stands out in this year’s trends? There’s an increased focus on user engagement through comments, features, reviews, and quick answers. Furthermore, comprehensive & in-depth content is emerging as the winner, with emphasis being laid on detailed content in written and video formats. As a SEO strategist in 2019, you cannot afford to ignore technical search engine optimization, and utilizing technological advancements such as AI & machine learning in guiding the same (Rank Brain’s significance is only expected to grow in the future). Google’s Mobile First index is also expected to gain traction- especially since 50.3% of all searches are done on mobile now.
There’s been a slow but steady move away from older SEO tactics like spam commenting, keyword stuffing, forced linking, duplicate content, intrusive ads and more (not much of a surprise, as these are the antithesis of user-friendliness and valuable content). These trends provide you with a very clear outline of the SEO rules you have to be following in 2019. The good news? These are game-changing rules that will have a direct impact on your SEO ranking, your organic traffic, and your brand imaging.
From ensuring mobile responsiveness, to using latent semantic indexing, here’s a handy infographic, demystifying the 15 game-changing SEO rules for transforming for your marketing strategy in 2019.
