SEO techniques are continuously and rapidly changing with evolving Google algorithms. If you are not aware of up-to-date SEO trends then it may lead to leaks in your inbound marketing budgets.
Tactics that had won you a front-page result in 2018 are not only outdated in 2019, but they may even hurt your website’s rankings in the form of a Google penalty. Some techniques still work but others are simply not effective anymore. That’s why you will need to include plenty of new methods in your list.
Is SEO in 2019 is different from how it was in 2018?
Definitely!
That’s the reason you need to stay top of the ball in SEO, otherwise you will fall behind in the SERPs.
If you are seeing other websites are ranking higher then you on Google in 2019, it is because they are making continuous efforts to improve their SEO.
Luckily, it’s not too late for you to get started.
So, let’s follow the below SEO techniques to help you skyrocket your search engine rankings and boost your ranking organically in 2019.
1) Improve User Experience Across Your Complete Website
Always keep in mind Google only wants to deliver the best results to its users. Google way of thinking is that if a user spends more time on a page, it’s probably because he/she found the page useful.
Always try to develop a high-quality website. It can help you in ranking high in SERPs. Google always reward websites with a higher ranking that have low bounce rates.
So, how you can improve the user experience?
Follow the below 5 SEO techniques to improve user experience and give your existing content a boost in search engines.
A) Make Your Content Easy to Read
Try to improve the readability of your content by including shorter paragraphs, mixed sentence length, sub-headings, bullet points, white spaces and images, and writing quality content.
B) Make Use of Bucket Bridges to Pique Interest
A bucket bridge is a copy writing technique designed to capture a reader’s interest by the use of a trigger word or phrase and then ending the sentence with a colon. For example, you can sprinkle the following bucket bridges throughout your content.
- You might be wondering:
- Here is the deal:
- It gets better:
- The answer is:
- You are probably thinking:
C) Write in the Inverted Pyramid Style
Inverted Pyramid Style means write the most valuable content at the top of the article, and then following up with the less important information.
D) Analyze and Improve Current Page Designs
You can make use of different user testing tools like Crazy Egg, Optimizely, Google Optimize, User Testing, ClickFlow to analyze how people are interacting with your website and how to improve their user experience.
Site speed plays a major role in SEO. Of course, people don’t like to wait for years to access the information they are searching for. So, use the tools which are launched by Google to improve your site speed such as PageSpeed Insights, and Think with Google.
Also, remove unnecessary code on your webpage, enable browser catching, reduce server response time, and compress images to boost your page speed and secure higher conversions.
2) Voice Search Optimization
These days, in 2019, half of the people are using the voice-assisted device to search on Google. If you think that this is not that you should include in your SEO strategy in 2019 then you are completely wrong. Voice searchers have completely different search habits than text searchers.
The devices which are being used in search whether it is an Amazon Alexa, Siri, or Google Home, they take data from SERPs to replay information from the featured snippet box back as their answer.
A) Make Use of Long-Tail Keywords in Your Content
In voice-based search always long-tail keywords are used. So, you should write content around long-tail keywords. As per Moz, voice searchers use long-tail keywords when they are searching for any kind of information on Google. These terms are almost 3+ words in length.
2) Use Structured Data
Make use of structured data. It is the best way to boost the chances of your information being read aloud to your target audience. There are various kinds of structured data (schema markup) that SEO can use. It helps to rank better. You can even use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to discover whether you have already got Schema implemented or not.
3) Concentrate on Topic Cluster Instead of Keywords
Google is continuously evolving and its algorithms also. Nowadays, Google gives importance to user intention. For example, what they expect, what they are looking for, and what search results would be best suited to answer their query.
You should consider 3 things mainly while developing content.
A) Try to Know Your Target Audience
Before start writing content it is better you know your target audiences such as their location, age, and interests. Improved knowledge about target audience = better content = better SEO. By writing content by keeping buyer personas in mind you will minimize the chances of creating content that doesn’t actually get results.
B) Organize Content into Clusters
You should focus on organizing all your content into different themes rather than focusing on standalone keywords. You can use the topic cluster model created by HubSpot to organize your content. This model breaks down your content into topic and clusters with the pillar pages and clusters. By putting this strategy into practice, you give a chance to Google’s spider to crawl, understand, and use the internally linked content to rank each page.
C) Research Keywords and utilize them cautiously.
You are probably thinking: Why we are telling you to do keyword research when we have told you to focus on topic clusters rather than keywords? The answer is simple: Keyword still matters. Organizing content thematically is imperative but it is a completely wrong approach to ignore keywords entirely. So, list the keywords and use them sparingly.
4) Conquer Video with YouTube SEO
Most SEOers forget about YouTube when they think of search engines but as per the recent study, YouTube is the second most popular search engine with more than 3 billion searchers per month. So, be smart and create engaging videos and invest your time into optimizing each video for YouTube SEO.
Keep the following 3 things in mind to improve your conversion rate.
- Make your video SEO-friendly
- Make longer videos
- Create custom thumbnails
Keeping Up With Search Engine Optimization in 2019
In a nutshell, SEO is changing quickly from one year to the next. Why? It is because new algorithms are constantly up-and-coming and Google frequently editing their webmaster guild lines.
If you are a business owner or marketer, you should adopt it quickly. Remember, to focus on the creation of quality engaging content, try to get a grip on technical optimization, build a variety of backlinks, and use different tools to measure your SEO performance.
Be brave and use a handful of AI-based tools. The AI revolution is an emerging trend which will take over the marketing world in 2019. So, we are suggesting welcoming it.
Take a deep breath and make the effort to understand the basics of SEO in the context of the current year. It will help your website to get higher click-through rates, engagement, and of course, rankings.