Modern business, whether it be online or
offline, has long ago become dominated by SEO. These three letters have become
the Holy Grail of internet marketing, partly because they are so illusive that
it’s hard to pin what exactly they mean in terms of strategy. There is no such
thing as a bulletproof SEO strategy but there are pretty tangible ranking goals
that can be achieved if you are trendy enough. The thing is that Google ranking
factors alternate from year to year and the present year 2019 has a few surprises
up its (searchable) sleeve.
If you desire your enterprise to dominate
search this years, here are the top 10 trending factors that you need to be
aware of.
1. Google is not the only one
After Yahoo lost popularity a decade ago, Google became the most popular search engine in the world. This is the reason why users have set Google as their homepage and they never stop to think is there an alternative to it. Well, there is, as many websites, online store, and social media platforms of their own that get searched every day in the millions. YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook are just the tip of the online search engines that aren’t ranked that much behind the almighty Google, so you need to be visible here as well. Just take businesses who are switching their operation to Facebook and Instagram and often do not have a proper website but just a page at social media.
2. Social Media
Although social media pages have not made
their way into the immediate hits by Google, these pages too are ranked, so the
more platforms you are present at, the higher the chances that you get a higher
ranking factor. You probably have accounts on the most popular social media networks like the aforementioned
Facebook and Instagram, and you have recently opened a Twitter account.
However, the number of platforms is not that important (it depends on your
customers’ preferences), as the quality of content you post regularly. The last
work is essential because consistency in posting is the thing that will get you
a high rank on Google search.
3. It’s getting personal
Generic searches were cute and all back in
1998 but people today expect to type as fewer characters as possible and
receive the most accurate answer possible. That is why the good folks in Google
have invested a lot of energy to make each search s personal as possible. They
have been able to achieve this by aligning the searched items with previous
searches and perhaps realize that there is a pattern. Furthermore, the searches
have become more geo-specific, so if you search type in “coffee shop” the hits
you get will list coffee houses in your immediate vicinity first. This is why
it is important to provide as much data as possible about your business, from
the year of founding to the exact address, so Google will have more information
to go by.
4. Robots take over
As we said in the previous paragraph,
Google search engine is trying to create a pattern in billions of searches
worldwide but this is not something that human employees are responsible for.
This task is carried out by machine, i.e. Artificial Intelligence (AI) software
that is memorizing what people search for and tries to find common interests.
By analyzing several million pages, robots can single out the most important
information that people are actually searching for and display them. Besides
posting as much info possible about your enterprise, try to sort this data in a
manner that will make it easy for bots and human visitors alike to interpret.
This means that people shouldn’t have to click ten times on your web
presentation just to find out what your open hours are!
5. Speed matters
The time necessary for a page to open, with
special regard to access through smartphones, was among the most important
ranking factors in the previous years and it will remain to be so in 2019. You
probably already know the importance of fast loading but did you know that images
are the ones that are slowing down the process the most? They need to be
compressed, especially if they are part of longer explanatory posts that
contain multitude images. Hardly anyone is going to read WordPress blog if the
images take forever to load. Especially vulnerable are portfolio websites like
the ones professional photographers have, so they need not only need to
compress the images but know how to choose the right platform for their
business as well.
6. A novelty: voice search
Did you notice that cabmen annoyingly repeat the address you give them when they ask where you are going? Don’t be alarmed, they are using voice search on their app like millions of other users. This way if searching leaves your hands free and the voice recognition software has advanced immensely so it can recognize even the awkwardest of accents and dialects. In terms of SEO, the main difference is that sentences are going to be longer and more natural sounding. Instead of “best wedding photographer,” people will ask “who’s the best wedding photographer?” This means that you are going to have to start using long-tail keywords to accommodate for this colloquial style of voice searching.
7. Another novelty: blockchain technology
If you too have heard about blockchain technology that Bitcoin is based on but have utterly failed to grasp its essence, worry not, as many others haven’t as well. What you do need to know in terms of search engine optimisation is that blockchain ushered I a new sensed of trust and it did away with artificial traffic created by bots. This means that is easier to determine how many organic visits you get, so your competitions can no longer use automate clicks to improve their rankings.
8. Words and videos
There are some 30
million people watching videos daily on YouTube alone. This
translates into a huge number of people who want to find new information in the
video, not the textual, format. Your SEO strategy needs to take this fact into
consideration and offer visitors a chance to watch a video to learn about the
things they want. Many companies opt for a short video presentation of their
goods and services posted at their homepage. This way, users don’t have to
browse the entire website as the information is readily available at a click of
a mouse. You needn’t open a YouTube account, but your online presentation
should feature a strip with various videos that inform potential clients about
the services you offer. Make sure the titles of these videos are clear and that
he contain all the keywords.
9. The technical bit
Essentially, business analysts, content
managers, and marketing strategists are the ones who are responsible for SEO
strategies in your company. However, there is another side to SEO, the
technical side that often gets shun behind. This is what makes your SEO
possible, so developers also need to follow the latest trends. Some of the
tasks developers are trusted with are the aforementioned page speed and
mobile-friendliness, which are both essential segments of a successful SEO
strategy. With the help of graphical designers, technical SEO department is
also responsible for the site architecture which can make or break your online
presence.
10. Influencing the influencer
Back in the day, big businesses paid hefty
sums to celebrities to advertise their products. The basic principle has not
changed much apart from the profile of a typical celebrity. Now they are
bloggers or YouTube influencers whom you can pay to promote you.
Since their promotion will be carried online, it will automatically increase
the number of hits, incorporating their fan base.
We hope that these 10 trends will help you rank higher in Google searches in 2019. Most of them will be topical in 2020 as well, so work to your best to grasp their essence and put them into practice with the help of your digital marketing team.
Women Love Tech would like to thank Stella Green Thompson for her story.