SEO Trends and Techniques in 2019: What Challenges are Coming?

The future of SEO is right behind the corner whether you like it or not. That is why you have to accept this fact and move on along with upgrading our SEO and digital marketing strategies to make them even more appealing to the future realities.

In the article below, I would discuss 8 the most outstanding SEO trends and techniques that are waiting for us in 2019. Also, I would touch on the challenges and pitfalls in the way of obtaining a top rank in your search engine in the new upcoming year.

Many of you are pretty familiar with what search engine is and what it was back in the days, however, it is really intriguing to observe how it is evolving right now. Stick and stones might break my bones, but things like domain authority, backlink profile and for instance, authorship is the SEO of the past. Now, it is all about your reputation.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that reputation is undoubtedly essential, you got to continuously amplify it with new technologies keeping pace with your fastidious client; which means you have to improve your user experience all the time – no excuses.

Let’s see how user experience might show itself off in 2019.

#1. User Experience and its Ever-Growing Importance

It’s not a secret that long-term client-orientated strategies are bringing the most of the revenue for the companies in the past few decades. Take Amazon as an example. The same goes for SEO. Search engine likes when you care about a visitor. In fact, the user experience is one of the most fundamental ranking factors in Google today.

Engage users; entertain them; keep them on your page and always consider their needs. I’m not saying to turn your webpage into an overflowing place of joy. Just be natural:

• Minimize count and get rid of irrelevant or annoying ads.
• Optimize the page-loading speed to the limit.
• Design only user-friendly UI.
• Write quality and readable content and textual elements.
• Use white space – let your visitors breathe.
• Provide a mobile-friendly experience.

Nothing new. Still, it is a good reminder for what you have to focus on while improving the user experience and preventing customers from getting back to search results in 2019. 

#2. Voice Search

User: Ok Google, how many percents of searches will voice search compile in 2020?

Google: Processing…

Google: By 2020, 50 percent of all searches will be voice searches.

Smart digital assistants such as Alexa and Siri are helping people to get their things done on a regular basis. They daily receive hundreds of thousands of requests like “why…”, “when…” or “how…” and their number is expected to rise enormously in 2019.

This is what makes voice search stand out – after forming your long-tail request in real time, instead of nine million results you get one, the most relevant. Moreover, your query is way more specific since it is a natural question like the one you might ask your friend.

Voice search is quick. Voice search is efficient. And voice search is convenient. What is even the reason to neglect it? Besides, today, 40% of adults are already using it at least once a day!

SEO is for sure going to be more focused on solving problems and answering people’s questions in the nearest future. Nonetheless, SEO specialists have no complete understanding of how to monetize voice search yet, since this type of search is relatively new, especially if to compare to traditional ones.

The only advice is to start dealing with voice search as one of the most important upcoming digital marketing trends and explore it right now, because right after someone figures out how to make profit from it, at least, you will already be at the top rank or Siri is going to use you for announcing search results. 

#3. Artificial Intelligence Will Influence the Keyword Research in 2019

The impact and contribution of the AI to the modern Internet is obviously enormous and cannot be unnoticed. The Internet with smart search results and relevant ads based on your previous experience play an important role in numerous digital marketing strategies all over the world.

It is not enough just to use different SEO techniques and ignore the presence of artificial intelligence in the web. Today, the understanding of the way how AI “thinks” has become a key to getting the best outcomes for various SEO practitioners.

Considering the fact that the AI is developing with a huge speed, it is not hard to predict changes of the traditional keyword research. However, AI and Machine Learning algorithms need some time to learn consumer behaviour that is why experts believe that the time when we will sense the all-out power of AI’s impact will approximately come in the next few years.

As an example of how the keyword research is slowly mutating, let’s consider the way we have to adjust our keywords, for instance, for Rankbrain, by Google. Since simple keyword-spamming does not work anymore, we have to grant our keywords new semantic values in order to meet the requirements of the AI. Therefore, giving an explanation or a definition of an original keyword instead of just mentioning it, might add a great number of new keywords and bring more organic traffic to your page.  

#4. Blockchain Technologies Will Meet SEO

Once one of the most innovative and simultaneously controversial explorations of a human mankind is now predicted to affect SEO. How?

Blockchain technology, if you are not familiar with it yet, appears to be one of the most sophisticated trends in digital marketing for people to follow. Basically, blockchain is an interconnected system of blocks where each of them contains all the information about one another. When the transaction occurs, every block should confirm it is valid to proceed. That is why there is no chance to go through with an invalid or fake payment.

Complete trust is what’s going to happen with the Internet after blockchain will be integrated completely. No fear towards fraud ads, fake news, scammer websites, and other harmful elements which misguide millions of people every single day making blockchain #1 upcoming paid search trend. Moreover, the search results will be more clear and credible to a user who won’t be afraid to misclick and get their personal data stolen from their computers or bank accounts.

Plus, blockchain will eradicate click fraud making every click transparent to both website owner and advertiser since all the transactions are public information. Again, this is instantly making blockchain top among paid search trends.

Experts believe that this integration might occur throughout the next 2-3 years and mastering the technology now is essential for SEO to not abruptly become an outsider. 

#5. VR and AR Will Create their Own Niche in Search

I am pretty much sure you have already heard about augmented and virtual reality having its place in the digital market. To be honest, these two have been a great addition to digital marketing so far. For instance, now you can check out the look of the sofa or bed from e-commerce store without leaving your bedroom – all you have to do is just to upload an application to your phone or tablet.

Of course, the way we search won’t be changed completely; however, AR and VR will sufficiently change our common link building techniques, lead generating tactics and the recipe for engaging customers.

Virtual content also might steal the show of infographics by being a more entertaining way of consuming visual information. Furthermore, the content of such a kind might even get its own searching section, just like Google did to videos and images. 

#6. Visual Search – To Be!

Similar to other SEO trends, the visual search won’t completely replace the original methods of searching the information; it will only be a great and handy addition to it. Along with the development of search engine possibilities, now it is getting much easier to search for information, especially, when you can find things without using words at all!

Visual search feels perfect with the whole variety of businesses. Imagine the situation: your best friend has just bought a new pair of snickers that you liked right away. You take a picture of them and try to find the brand’s name. You look through the website’s catalog and find another pair of nicely looking shoes that you like even more. Now you become a client since you have just got a fine pair of new snickers as well. Sure, a pair of snickers is only a little tiny drop in the huge ocean of marketing.

Moreover, since e-commerce has become extremely popular nowadays, it creates even more possibilities to obtain benefits from using visual search oriented SEO techniques to improve their ranking positions and accessibility.

To match new algorithms it is essential to not forget to:

• Include alt-text descriptions for images.
• Mention keywords in image titles.
• Physically optimize images – reduce their size and choose a right file format.
• Check whether your image looks good both on a desktop and mobile devices.
• Make a use of correct schema org markup for images
• Upload only clear, high-quality pictures of your products
  

#7. Amazon Search Might Become a New Google

Amazon is huge – it sells nearly anything you can think of. Therefore, people are coming there to search for products as they’ve used to come to Google. Moreover, Amazon has all the decision-making factors right at the product page – customer’s reviews, comparison tool, similar products suggestion or “also buy with” algorithms. No need to do multiple searches now.

For those SEO whose preferable platform is Amazon, keywords and item descriptions will have to transform into more engaging, quality and user-friendly content. Since Amazon has all chances to become a new Google, neglecting these simple factors will simply throw you out of search results and therefore deprive you of your revenue.  

#8. Social Media Optimization

Social networks are places for millions of people to spend the majority of their time. Therefore, since Google sees the demand, it indexes and prioritizes social network pages and even ranks it higher than some particular web pages.

For instance, Youtube. Did you know that Youtube has already become a second biggest search engine? Yet, it is a social network, but it contains so much diverse and useful material that it has developed its own search engine “ecosystem”.

If you’re using Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn to support your SEO strategy, you have to understand that everything is written there should be noticeable, clear, engaging and should bring value.

Thank you so much for reading to this point! Hopefully, the information I gave about the most up-to-date SEO trends and techniques will help you to consider your next steps while preparing an SEO campaign to breathe freely in 2019.

You might have noticed that I did not mention much of SEO challenges waiting for us in 2019, it’s simply because they’re countless – everybody acknowledged new SEO trends and techniques but no one knows what exactly to expect and what challenges might even come out of nowhere along with new ranking algorithms and restrictions from search engines.

As a conclusion, you have to bear in mind that everything that I’ve mentioned above: every algorithm, any of numerous SEO techniques or ranking signals of Google, or other search engine serves to contribute one single goal – force you to make your content useful, relevant and accessible to a client by all means. This might sound obvious and simple for sure, but isn’t all ingenious simple?

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Jenna Brandon

Jenna Brandon is a blogger, content writer, and digital marketer at Writology.com. She’s on a never-ending quest for excellence in writing and photography. Jenna is also an avid traveller and a loving wife.

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• SEO Trends and Techniques in 2019: What Challenges are Coming? - September 24, 2018