Each year the digital marketing industry gets disrupted with multiple Google algorithm updates. It is a challenge for businesses to keep up with new strategies to stay atop of page one in Google. 
With all the noise from these updates, it leaves owners scrambling to determine which strategy to follow. We’ve reached out to the top digital marketing experts to ask they’re advice on what to do in 2019.
Use A Three Tiered Approach
“The most foundational way to ensure your SEO program is successful is to manage it using a strategic process,” says Janet Bartoli of Strategy Rework. “Using a three tiered approach, start with a full technical audit, identify search engine inhibitors. Next, move to content strategy – target user intent, and develop content for all parts of the buyer journey, and finally manage your trust and authority with brand strategy leveraging link acquisition. Whether you manage SEO programs for your employer in-house, or work with clients through a digital agency, SEO needs oversight and daily management to make it work most effectively.”
Onsite SEO Will Boost Paid Media
“For most business owners, investing time and resources into good onsite SEO is a no-brainer, but did you know that same investment can positively affect your paid media strategy as well? For those looking to make the most of their SEO investment and take their PPC to the next level, we suggest checking out Google Ads Smart Campaigns,” echoes Adam Arkfeld of ParaCore. “This campaign type scrapes your sites index and automatically generates the most qualified traffic, maximizing your paid ads performance. Good SEO isnt just about driving organic traffic anymore—it should be part of a larger organic and paid strategy.”
“The rise of voice and its impact on a company’s online visibility needs to be top-of-mind for online brands. The more people rely on intelligent assistants to access information, the more important it is for companies to have a strong SEO strategy,” describes Grayson Kemper of Clutch. “Though most people don’t scroll through multiple search results pages as is, its literally impossible to do so through voice. This means that if a company doesn’t rank well for a term, it has no chance of earning exposure when people search that topic through a voice assistant.”
Implement Structured Data
“Structured Data has been one of the most under estimated options in which helps assisting with Organic awareness and click through. I am not talking organic assistance as in the rank boosting. I am speaking in the terms of credibility in the eye of your audience,” states Carley Kuehner of Cosmick Technologies. “We have been monitoring very closely the differences with sites that do not partake in the Google structure data options out there. An example, we recently implemented on a Fortune 100 company was an 8 month test. We performed this test on 65 franchise websites. Understanding the markup for proper structured data is key. It all started when we noticed a star rating appearing in SER’s that were primarily eCommerce related websites. Basically, if you think about it, these are people who purchased a product, and came back to leave a review. When structured data is implemented properly these reviews are crawled by Google. Structured data is Google’s way to scrape what is product-based reviews customers are leaving regarding your products sold. This is the one voice the customers have to state how good your products are. With that mentality we of thought of implementation that philosophy on non-eCommerce sites. Companies do not have to have an eCommerce site to make Google aware of what your customers are saying. We simply took standard reviews that customers are leaving within a website, and we coded them to support the structured data markup, and within 3 months we noticed that most all SER’s now were being broadcast-ed with a review rating. Understanding the mentality of a consumer or b2b shopper is key. You have seconds to capitalize on our audience. Other SEO’s state there is a 3 second rule when a visitor visits your website. What about a 1 second rule when some is browsing Organic results. Maximize that presence with using structured data and offering the best possibly listing display you can. Once you at least do that we have seen a 25 to 35% traffic boost in organic click through.”
Website Speed
“One of the easiest ways to begin a successful SEO strategy in 2019 (and beyond) is to choose a great website host that guarantees speed performance with ultra-fast servers,” states Kelly Kilgallon of Tap House Media. “We suggest hosts like WP Engine or SiteGround. A slow website can lead to a major decrease in conversions not to mention hurt your SEO rankings with our best pal, Google. It’s also a good idea to boost website speed by using a CDN, a caching plugin, and an image optimizer.”
Create Unique Content For Your Users
“The best way to rank high in the Search Engines is to learn from your competition. A great SEO strategy is to first visit the top twenty sites ranking for your target keywords. The next step is to identify what makes those SERPs special, and what information they are offering to users,” echoes Bradley Poller of Princeton Internet Marketing. “Once gathered, create a page that leverages that information to create a unique compilation of content. Be sure to incorporate your own version of this information, along with any new information you can contribute to the topic. If your page has this compiled content, then when comparing apples to apples (similar backlink profile, domain status, etc.) these pages will quickly gain position.”
Voice Search
“2019 is a milestone year for the number of people claiming they’re going to start trying Voice Search,” echoes Ryan Klein of Market My Market. “Proper structured data and content will be crucial for these voice results to include information from your website.”
Conversion Rate Optimization
“In 2019 we’ve seen more of our clients investing in Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) based website re-designs and an increased commitment to Search Engine Optimization,” says Kurt Schell of Lithium SEO. “This has been especially beneficial to our local SMB service industry clients who are in growth mode with the economy being so strong. They recognize that now is the time to take up a bigger piece of the search visibility landscape so that they are better positioned when the economy inevitably slows down.”
Update Directories
“More mobile searches mean its more important than ever to optimize your main “barnacle” sites. Yelp, Angies List, and Yellowpages are examples of barnacle sites that “latch on” and rank on the first page of search results, often outranking the sites of local businesses,” says Dan Delmain of Delmain. “Mobile searchers are usually still early in the decision-making process, evaluating multiple options, and looking for reviews. They will often click into these barnacle sites over a business website. Its crucial to create profiles on these sites that are thoroughly and correctly filled out with up-to-date information and plenty of photos.”
Create Great Content
“Content marketing, definitely. We’ve been working with a lot of small, low profile companies looking to raise their visibility. PPC can get you out there for the search engines, but not so much for branding visibility – or real authority, for that matter,” echoes Gabriella Sannino of Level343. “We’ve found content marketing to be our top method of introduction. Add in a little social media and its the perfect combination for a one-two punch.”
Ahava Leibtag of Aha Media believes you need to write for users first. “When filled with quality content that website visitors find useful, question and answer pages (like FAQs) can become a treasure trove of SEO potential. Always write for users first, focusing on plain language they can understand. This flows right into the third trend, voice search. The key to voice search optimization is using conversational language. Incorporating conversational content topics and keywords into your strategy is one of the smartest things you can do to tweak your content for voice search.”
Look At KPIs Beyond Keywords
“Keyword rankings do not always tell the entire story when it comes to the success and growth of your digital marketing and SEO campaigns,” states Robb Fahrion of Flying V Group. “When defining goals for SEO campaigns, focus on things like overall site traffic, impressions, and average keyword positioning. These are the best indicators for the success of the campaign. A SEO campaign is more successful if more traffic is driven to the site no matter what keyword position primary keywords are in.”
“One of the strengths of the internet is its ability to help consumers find the right needle in a digital haystack of data,” says Jesse Underwood of Underwood Marketing.
