SEO trends and practices

With all the changes google keeps making, it’s getting more and more difficult to know which changes are going to up your SEO game in 2019, here are some SEO trends and practices you want to look out for.

1. Going mobile

A lot of factors influence how you rank on Google. These days, the attention has seen a major shift from desktop and PC to mobile users. This due to the fact that the majority of Google users use smartphones and tablets.

What this means for you is that since Google crawls for sites with mobile optimization, sites without it tend to fall lower in the ranking.

Google introduced mobile optimization as a ranking factor in the year 2016 since then it has seen outstanding growth. In the summer of 2018, Google officially implemented their ‘mobile first index’.

It’s no longer an option whether to optimize your site for mobile, it’s a requirement if you want to rank.

2. Optimize for local traffic.

A lot of businesses rely on local traffic as opposed to online traffic for their businesses. These businesses may know it to be a good idea to have an online presence, but having an online presence without local SEO is a waste of valuable online real estate.

The top three spots with high visibility and considerable traffic are usually occupied by close-by businesses that are optimized with their location.

A major way to step-up your SEO game and finally cash-in on all that traffic is to;

1. Associate your business with a location

2. Claim the business on Google. N/B: You can also do this by simply searching out your business on the Google Map. (A way of letting Google know you’re there).

3. Post your map address on your website as well as on your social media outlets.

4. Include the areas your business operates and the specific range of services you render.

5. Add your location when targeting SEO keywords like ‘Digital marketing agency in London’.

6. Focus on widespread SEO like backlinks, social media popularity, Google reviews etc.

3. Key sentences or strings vs keywords

If you know something about keyword research, this isn’t the first time you’re hearing this. Keywords are one of the most important factors to consider when doing SEO. It basically determines your rank in any SERP.

So, if you’re a new or small site without little in the way of authority that’s okay, you can still rank. When optimizing your titles, subtitles or whatever it is you’re optimizing, it’s a good idea to imagine what your potential client is going to type in the search box.

For example, if you use a keyword such as ‘Toyota Corolla’, you’re going to see older sites with way more authority than you. And the problem with using such keywords is that apart from the vicious competition, such keywords usually lead to their key string cousins that Google thinks their users want to find.

If you’ve not been using this strategy, you might want to try it, with Google coming up with all sorts of filters, this one leads your client straight to you. And high specificity means the traffic you’re getting will convert better than the random traffic that’ll just click away.

4. Optimize for voice search

Google reports that one in every search is a voice search. This can be performed while driving and/or using mobile assistants like Bixby, Siri and google voice. Its popularity is a by-product of the sudden popularity of mobile (I.e. mobile first index).

This type of searches usually involves very specific long-tailed keywords. While optimizing it’s a good idea to try to guess what your potential clients are going to say.

Another excellent strategy is optimizing your content for a variety of languages using google translate. Especially when marketing products and services internationally.

5. Good old backlinks

It’s easy to ignore this one since setting up, takes up some additional minutes but Google will reward your efforts.

A lot of people go about saying link building is an outdated SEO strategy but Gary Illyes from Google disagrees. He says that page rank is still a very important ranking at Google and will remain so in the foreseeable future. He also said that authority or link power is obtained by having appreciable backlinks.

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