The 10 Biggest SEO Trends to Stay on Google’s Good Side in 2019
Google is the world’s largest search engine, so you need to keep it happy to stay ranked. Here are the 10 biggest SEO trends for 2019 to make it happen.
The cost of digital marketing is constantly growing, with even small businesses set to spend $75,000 this year alone. If you’re not prepared for the changes coming with the way SEO trends are shifting, you won’t be ready to rank highly on Google for long. While you might not be the most digitally adept company, having the right approach can ensure you don’t fall behind competitors.
Here are four ways to stay ahead of Google’s SEO needs this coming year.
1. User Intent Matters
The first step to mastering your audience is by knowing who they are and what they want. If you don’t do enough research in advance, you won’t be able to know what your audience wants and how they want it. You need to learn not only what kind of content your audience is looking for but whether they prefer text, videos, podcasts, or memes.
When someone looks up a word or phrase related to your audience, you should know in advance what they’re looking to find. It takes some brainstorming, but you should know your products and services better than your audience does. You should do the research to learn what they want and why they want it.
Put together a focus group if necessary and find out what people look for when they’re looking for content like yours. Survey your audience and potential customers to see what they’ve enjoyed, what they want more of, and what they want less of. This will get you closer to the figure you want to reach when it comes to customer engagement.
Well-written content for the wrong audience isn’t going to get the kind of response that you’re looking for. If the content is written for customers you already have but they don’t tend to repeat buy very often, you need to start getting people through the door. If you have a niche service that has a small audience base, then you need to plan for what they want from you and keep winning them back.
2. You Need Great Content
More than anything else, you need to have great content to keep your customer base happy. Offering great content will get you lots of meaningful clicks. If you can write broadly enough, you’ll get attention from people in tangential or related industries to see what you have to say.
When you write and create strong content, people who don’t even know what you do will end up sharing it. All attention is good attention. However, you can’t pass up the strength of targeting your audience.
While lots of companies are hustling to make viral content that’s focused on starting conversations, they’re not always getting the right attention. If Nike were to create a lot of viral content that attracted just people who were interested in high-end footwear, they would be wasting their dollars. They need to know their market before they try to create the next viral trend.
Great content will get your attention, get your information shared, and get you a high off-page SEO rating. When people are sharing your content outside of your immediate industry, you’ll get valuable attention that shows search engines you offer great content.
3. Let Your Keywords Grow
Years ago, we were being instructed to make our keywords as short and simple as possible. If you were a sneaker retailer, you had to use “shoes”, “sneakers”, “basketball”, and maybe “Michael Jordan”. However, as content has grown wildly on the internet, there’s no easy way to compete with the biggest brands out there.
You need to target your audience through keywords. This takes knowing your identity well.
If you know who you are and what you offer, you’ll be able to use more meaningful keywords. And rather than keeping keywords limited to just one or two words, you can let them grow longer and longer.
IF you’re a retailer offering discount last chance women’s athletic sneakers in Chicago, well, you can guess what your long-tail keyword should be. It should be a few variations of “Chicago discount women’s athletic sneakers”. It takes some practice and for you to create a few different options but you’ll get the hang of capturing your audience.
Selling sneakers could branch out into a lot of different directions, so make content relevant to each type of search. Have “best athletic shoes under $100”, “best athletic shoes for hiking”, “best running shoes for men”, and whatever else applies.
4. Mobile Masters Everything
If you haven’t made mobile browsing your main focus, you need to get on top of your new mobile audience. As mobile browsing has definitively surpassed desktop’s numbers, you need to be where your customers are. No matter what industry you’re in, you need to be offering mobile options to any customer, old or new.
Whether you’re offering a mobile app or you’re just directing people to your website, it needs to be optimized for mobile display.
If you’re designing a new website, make sure your designer is using a mobile-first approach. If they’re not prioritizing your mobile site, then you’re going to lose followers and drop in the rankings. Search engines now rank sites based on how well prepared they are for mobile displays.
When a site isn’t mobile-optimized, it has low readability and it’s hard to use. If you want to get viewers and keep your audience, go mobile-first.
SEO Trends in 2019 are Going to Change
While we don’t have any concrete numbers yet, VR and AR are going to enter the market and change SEO trends permanently. It’s vital to be future proof when you’re trying to stay ahead. Keep your ear to the ground and look at what industry experts are saying to stay on top of trends.
If you’re deciding on your next ad buy, check out our guide for some tips.
Recent Comments