Like everything else, SEO strategies and tactics also evolve with the times. After all, Google’s algorithm changes as well.

This 2019, there are old, new, and improved SEO techniques that will help businesses dominate the SERPs and increase their revenue earnings. If you are an SEO professional who strongly desires to leave a mark in the business this year and help your clients achieve their goals, you should update your knowledge of the latest trends in SEO.

Without a doubt, the tips and tricks you will learn will help you ace an SEO interview if and when the important trends of the year will come up during the interview. This will boost your chances of turning an application into long-term employment.

So, what do the top SEO professionals consider as the most important trends in 2019 and which areas will they focus on?

1. Target Audience and User Intent

Understanding your user audience and search intent has always been an important part of SEO, but it will be more important than ever in 2019, what with ranking fluctuating over the years to ensure that the semantic intent of a search query is satisfied.

What does this mean exactly?

• Keyword research will be performed based on user intent.
• Website content must be perfectly written and optimized for the right audience.
• Content must comprehensively answer audience questions made through a search query.
• Content must anticipate and answer follow-up questions.

To achieve this, you must gain a better understanding of your target audience and their search intent.

2. Structured Data Markup

Schema structured markup data is not a ranking factor because it doesn’t have a direct impact on ranking or directly helps a website rank. But it does have an indirect impact because, as what Google’s Gary Illyes said, “It will help us understand your pages better, and indirectly, it leads to better ranks in some sense, because we can rank easier.”

Google has long recommended using it. So, why not?

But with AI becoming more important, structured data will be more vital than ever in 2019. Co-founder and managing director of Ryte, Marcus Tandler, considers this as the means to help AI work optimally. When information is highly structured, “contents and their relations to each other” will be processed faster.

3. Content Strategy

Websites that provide exceptional content rank highly throughout the year. And with algorithm updates indicating that Google is intensifying its focus on depth in quality content, publishing posts just for the heck of it will no longer fly.

So, It is important to provide users with the best in-depth experiences through content.

Experts suggest to:

• Write posts that are highly likely to acquire links to increase its chances of ranking.  
• Do one, properly distributed post in a month than several that will only get a few visits.
• Write content that:
  • Solves a problem
  • Answers a question
  • Helps with link building
  • Converts and makes a sale
  • Generates leads
  • Boosts reputation management
  • Helps with social proof and/or community building
  • Optimized to match search intent of a reader/user
  • Uses Schema markup

Director of ShellShock Shelley Walsh also recommends using content maps and experience maps to help create content that “use language to engage the user and guide the user
to the next action.”

4. Technical SEO

This will take center stage as websites become more complex over time. This makes investing in technical SEO a wise and profitable move. This is especially true with some key areas of focus such as Speed, JavaScript, and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs).

Google will reward sites more for faster speed. An increase in JavaScript-driven websites means SEOs must familiarize themselves with the framework. The future of websites is to live on as PWA.

Time to think about how to make this happen.

5. Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness

Better known as E-A-T, establishing and growing these key factors will be big in 2019 and will help SEOs “understand that ‘quality’ comes with context,” according to Dixon Jones, founder of DHJ Ventures.

You can’t write authoritative content and expect it to rank if you’re not an authority of the subject.

Distribution and promotion of content must be done from a reputation standpoint. Write a blog or publish a post that will make you an expert that journalists go to.

6. Voice Search

Although not quite right for the picking, experts believe that 2019 will be the year that voice optimization strategy will become part of a company’s to-do list.

The growing popularity of voice search devices will also bring to the fore the need to rework website content to directly answer questions made via voice search. The challenge, however, is to make effective use of voice response without the need for translators and to create the ideal format where the intent of more complex answers is satisfied.

Currently, voice search only works in some scenarios. Still, it will be a game changer in 2019.

7. On-page Optimization

This will continue to be an important SEO strategy in 2019, with some key website optimizations focused on content and conversions.

Write content that provides answers to your users’ common questions. Or use chatbots to deal with common and basic queries. Shorten the conversion process to make more sales while reducing the cost of acquiring customers.

Merkle’s Technical SEO Manager Alexis Sanders also recommends ensuring that only relevant results are served with internal site search and simplifying the way repeat customers restock items that they commonly purchase.

8. Featured Snippets and Other Features in Google SERPs

Don’t stop at website optimization.

To improve Google search experience this year, you should also optimize for features that will boost organic traffic. Optimize for featured snippets, answer boxes, carousels, knowledge graphs, and other search features.

9. Machine Learning

This is the answer to the search engines’ goals of answering intentions rather than questions. The prep work has already been rolled out through some layout changes that engines are pushing out.

For SEO, it will be the technology to help develop unique content, thus the need to adopt machine learning, “beginning with a set of data based on specific variables,” according to Jenn Mathews of Jenn Mathews Consulting.

Update your knowledge of the latest SEO strategies so you won’t be left behind. This is especially vital for professionals who need to serve something new to clients to beat the competition.

Implementing initiatives, however, is just the beginning. You also need to analyze and track your progress using the right tools and metrics, including micro KPIs–smaller, repetitive actions that make a significant contribution when added up.