SEO Trends 2019: Is Your Business Ready?

The online search behavior of people has changed significantly over the past few years and this trend is surely going to continue in 2019 as well. Internet bandwidths have been increasing, mobile phones have become ubiquitous, and data has become cheaper than ever.

All these have changed Search Engine Optimization forever and 2019 is also going to be an exciting year. Have you drawn up a strategy regarding how to embrace these emerging SEO trends in 2019 and started to act on them?

Here are some of the emerging trends in Search Engine Optimization which we expect will continue well into 2019 and beyond.

Mobile Search

Mobile search already dominates Google search results with more than 60% of the total search is being made from smartphones tablets and other mobile devices.

We expect the trend to become stronger in 2019.

Google has already switched to Mobile-First Indexing in 2018 and it is now prominently rewarding websites that are mobile optimized and load with lightning speed.

If your mobile website looks exactly like your desktop website and requires the users to pinch and zoom to see it even today, then there is a big problem. You need to change it with utmost priority.

You have three options:

1. Responsive website:

A responsive website adapts itself to fit the screen size of the device from which the user is viewing the site. Responsive websites are a de facto standard now and you must get one created as soon as possible. This will give you massive SEO benefits and take your digital marketing to the next level.

2. Progressive web apps:

Another option that you can think of is the Progressive Web Apps, which are essentially web apps that look exactly like a website but give an app-like experience to users. Already many prominent companies have switched their mobile websites into Progressive Web Apps and the significant advantages that it offers are likely to see many others doing so soon.

3. Accelerated mobile pages (AMP):

AMPs are mobile optimized versions of web pages that load 3 to 4 times faster than normal web pages and look remarkably nice on mobile devices. Having an amp optimized website is a sure-shot way of getting considered by Google for higher rankings.

Voice Search

Voice Search gives exceptional convenience to the users since they can access information with it from their devices without having to type anything. Not only is Voice Search done through mobile phones and tablets, searches through the Internet of things (IoT) devices and smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Alexa and Google Home are also becoming hugely popular.

The principle of Voice Search is amazingly simple. Instead of having to type your search query on a keyboard, you can simply issue a voice command and just tell your device what to search for. This is an incredible convenience especially when you are driving, cooking or your hands are occupied in any way.

Typically, it has been seen that the search queries used for Voice Search are longer than usual since it is natural that we speak faster than we can type. This gives rise to keywords that are longer than the long-tail keywords that we are normally used to.

Naturally, this is one of the most important SEO trends 2019, and you must get ready to take advantage of this huge boom.

Here are the things that you can do:

• Prepare your website for Voice Search by tweaking the content in it and even rewriting it wherever required.
• Ensure that you have installed an SSL certificate on your website. Https enabled websites have significantly better chances of featuring at the top of Voice Search results.
• Most importantly, improve the speed of the mobile version of your website to ensure that it loads fast enough to be featured in the Voice Search results by search engines.

Optimising your website for Voice Search is going to consume a lot of your time but it is going to reward you handsomely in the long term. Till now very few marketers have been focusing on Voice Search. If you start preparing your site for it early you can get an edge over the others.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to be one of the big SEO trends 2019. Though we have already started seeing its impact on digital marketing right from the time when Google introduced Rank Brain in 2015, the technology is still nascent, and its impact is yet to be fully felt.

One mistake that we have seen many marketers are making is that they are thinking that Machine Learning is limited to search results only. This is far from the truth. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are together changing the entire universe of digital marketing.

We expect many more AI-powered improvements to come to the search engines social media platforms, digital marketing tools and mobile apps in 2019. As Machine Learning continues, the technologies and platforms will become even smarter in 2019 and beyond, and we have to adapt our digital strategies to keep up with those impactful changes.

The Search Engine Algorithms will also undergo major changes every year to incorporate the improvements in Artificial Intelligence. Since this is a continuous and dynamic process, you will have to keep an eye on the changes being made on the search algorithms by Google and the other search engines and make changes to your website accordingly.

Structured Data and Rich Snippets

Structured Data and Rich Snippets give your users some remarkably interesting ways to discover your website in the way you would want them to. Savvy businesses are using these to highlight their business, brand, products, restaurant menu, shows, destinations etc. attractively and you should too. Having structured data increases your chances of getting good Click Through Rates (CTR), and there is no reason you would not want that.

As the impact of AI becomes more widespread, the search engines are expected to depend more on the Structured Data and Rich Snippets incorporated in the respective websites to discover and understand businesses. This enables it to showcase the relevant businesses in a much better way to the users.

Thus, incorporating the right structure data in your website will surely boost your SEO and you are going to get a significant improvement in traffic and leads.

Get ready for the SEO Trends 2019

So, these are the major SEO trends 2019 that we foresee. Please comment on the section below to let us know what you think will be big trends in SEO in 2019.

If you are a business owner and have any questions or need help with optimizing your website to take advantage of these SEO trends 2019, then feel free to request a free consultation from us.