Among all digital marketing processes, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the one that changes very frequently - and this might be intimidating. Not any marketer knows exactly how the ranking is made in search results (or at least no one except specialists in Google, Bing and other search engines), yet everyone knows that algorithms and formulas change over time. What worked as a SEO strategy 5 years ago, will not work today. In fact, what worked last year already doesn’t work the same way this year. If you are a B2B marketer who wants your website content to be visible and build your customer loyalty, then keeping up with SEO trends and new SEO strategies does not mean being sharp - this is essential.
There are many technical discussions about what these changes are, and it’s easy to feel lost due to SEO jargon: Google algorithm updates, like Penguin, Panda and Possum, hidden semantic indexing, quality assessment algorithms, as well as mysterious SERP and E-A-T. However, besides technical part, modern trends in SEO include general principles that are actually relatively easy to understand, along as tying it up with your content strategy, and it is worth it.
That’s why I’ve spend some time to search for a few trends that most SEO experts agree on, and write about it in a simple language. Applying these principles to the content you create, will help keep it high on the search engine results pages (which, by the way, what SERP means). This will create your Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Equally important, it will provide guidelines for a content strategy that remains focused on the information that your audience is looking for - because that's what a good SEO is about.
Here are the key trends in SEO for 2019 - technical, strategic and effective things that you should take into your attention nowadays.
Technical SEO
To rank pages, the search engine must be able to analyze the content efficiently. Therefore, the way your pages are structured can have a big impact on how visible your content is in search results. The reason why websites are nowadays built on JavaScript and HTML instead of Flash these days is because Google and other search engines have been struggling to effectively crawl Flash sites. However, making your content visible to search engine spiders is not the only technical issue affecting your ranking. Since search engines prefer the best user experience, they are also very interested in how your page loads on different devices. So, the page structure and the overall UX are behind the most important SEO technical trends 2019.
The page structure and the overall UX are behind the most important SEO technical trends 2019.
Mobile Indexing
In March 2018, Google announced that it would begin to consider mobile versions of websites as the primary versions of these sites when it comes to how relevant they are to the search query. This means that it is very important to check the speed loading of the content you are creating, your website mobile version, and work with your technical teams to make sure that your website responds to mobile devices - and that all relevant content is included. Most likely, you will lose if you invest in rich content that is poorly displayed in the mobile version of your site.
Mobile Website Speed
Google has always paid close attention to how quickly the pages load, but there are signs that the ranking speed is changing. In July 2018, Google included mobile page speed as a ranking factor, which is based on the actual user experience of your mobile website. SEO experts claim that this does not have a big impact on where pages are ranked in search results - not yet. However, since this is a new tool in the Google toolkit, it may change. What can you do about it? Check how fast your content loads on smartphones.
Check the speed loading of the content you are creating, your website mobile version, and work with your technical teams to make sure that your website responds to mobile devices.
SEO Strategies
As a B2B content marketer, this is where SEO becomes really interesting for me. These trends will help to ensure that the content that you create, and the way that you create it, gets a desirable visibility in search queries. Before it has been considered that SEO is mostly about the stuffing the desired paragraph with a predefined set of a magic amount of keywords. However, since then the search has developed far. SEO trends that matter today suggest you to be more creative and audience-oriented.
