Originally posted on https://www.market248.com/blog/10-seo-trends-destined-to-dominate-in-2019
The list of best SEO trends is ever-changing. Keep your business moving forward by implementing these 10 strong SEO trends of 2019.
According to research, sites ranked at the top of the first page of Google search results enjoy a 32 percent click-through rate on both desktop and mobile devices. For online marketers, this means more leads — and eventually a boost in sales.
But, given the ever-changing SEO trends, it can be quite difficult to keep tabs on what metrics the search engines are using to rank web pages. Luckily, we’ve pulled some of the latest, most-effective 2019 SEO trends to help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).
1. Page Freshness
Search engine crawlers are always looking to display relevant content to the user. As such, from a user’s perspective, the older the content the less relevant it is. Therefore, including a date on your page is one of the simplest ways of improving your page ranking.
More importantly, you may need to regularly update your content to maintain relevance with your target consumers. This may also involve reevaluating your target keywords to match what users are searching for.
2. Clean, Crawlable Code
If the search engine bot is having problems crawling through your website’s code, it’ll be difficult for your page to rank high SERPs.
Uncrawlable code is code that’s poorly formatted — which tends to slow down the loading speed of a page.
No matter how appealing some themes are, make sure they’re not too bulky so they won’t slow the loading speed. Moreover, ensure your site’s code is organized to make it easier for the crawler to read.
Working with an experienced web developer who understands SEO can help you mitigate any problems with unreadable code. They know how to best optimize code and get rid of irrelevant scripts that hender search engine rankings.
3. Voice Search’s Upward Trend
Although voice search got a lot of attention in 2018, it’s importance and prominence is expected to boom in 2019. This is thanks to the increasing use of digital assistants and smart home devices which depend on voice searches.
Voice searches tend to be longer than keyboard searches and that’s why you should focus on longtail keywords when optimizing your content. At the same time, it can be helpful to anticipate the questions your target customers are likely to ask. Then, optimize your content to answer these questions.
4. User Experience Calls the Shots
Search engines prioritize users’ experience, which explains why Google ranks user-friendly sites high. These sites are known to retain visitors for a longer time since their pages are easy to navigate and have a good engagement factor.
This boils down to how well the content is organized in terms of structure and fast response. Thus, ensure your web content is organized into scannable headers to make it easy for your readers to find useful information.
On the same note, get rid of excess pop-ups and shorten your menu list to declutter your site.
5. Mobile-First Indexing
Given that most of the internet’s traffic comes from mobile devices, it becomes almost impossible to overlook the browsing needs of this potential pool of traffic. In fact, Google is putting a lot of effort into ranking websites with mobile-friendly versions.
If your website is available in desktop version only, it’ll be difficult for many internet users to access your site, and consequently, it’ll be harder to rank on the first page of SERPs.
For this reason, you shoud make sure to use a current, mobile-friendly website, optimized for mobile browsing, to create a better user experience.
6. Links Are Still Important
The importance of links in SEO isn’t fading anytime soon — especially given the fact that Google considers brand mentions on websites for ranking purposes.
However, it’s important to note that the links you intend to use on your site should be relevant and add value to the users. Your content should also be unique and valuable to increase organic backlinks.
7. Focus on Image Search
In an era of voice search, the popularity of image search shouldn’t come as a surprise to online marketers. This new phenomenon allows users to conduct searches through images as opposed to content searching.
So, be sure the optimize your images to appeal to potential consumers. Your web content is an integration of text and images, so it makes sense to use enticing, quality images to enhance the delivery of valuable content.
8. Use Structured Data
Structured data is increasingly becoming important in SEO, as it helps search engines determine what your site is about. It simply refers to how information is organized on your website — from business information to product listings.
Although using structured data doesn’t have a direct impact on your page’s ranking, it helps you reach your target customers. The more access you have to your target customers, the more traffic to your site. This eventually communicates to search engines that your site is valuable and relevant to users, improving your ranking on SERPs.
9. Video Content Is Booming
The online audience has a increasingly high interest in video content, which makes it wise to leverage the power of informative video to deliver your content and attract more traffic. (Increased traffic often translates into high rankings)
Plenty of us dread dread reading long blocks of content. We’d rather watch a video that delivers the same information in less time. The bottom line; Videos are also a great way to invoke customer engagement and keep them on your pages longer, which can also help with rankings.
10. Featured Snippets
Featured snippets will continue to play an important role in 2019 SEO as it satisfies users’ need for simple answers to a question. For your content to appear on Featured Snippets, consider using question-and-answer sequences on your pages.
Keep up with the SEO Trends
The competition for search engine ranking is fierce, with ever-changing SEO trends making it more and more difficult to get the search engine rankings you want. It’s always a good idea to keep current on emerging SEO trends. The 10 SEO tips listed above will help you stay ahead of the competition in 2019.
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