New year, new challenges and for any affiliate/online marketing professional staying on top of the latest SEO trends and changes should be high on the priority list. We know you are busy, so we’ve saved you the effort of scanning through all the sources and brought you a short-list of the most current SEO trends you need to be aware of (and aim to implement) in 2019.
- Don’t build your whole business on Google – Google and other search engines CAN provide high quality and targeted traffic, BUT there are so many other places to obtain traffic from including social media, email marketing, Yahoo Answers or network with other bloggers and affiliate marketers.
- Understand your user’s intent – Does your audience prefer text? Images? Video? Audio. Knowing this will all be more important than ever in 2019.
- Super content – If you’re still creating content just to keep your blog alive, that won’t be good enough any longer. Google is intensifying its focus on evaluating content quality and rewarding sites that provide exceptional depth – this trend will continue in 2019.
- Mobile-first indexing – In a nutshell, mobile-first indexing means that Google uses the mobile version of your page for indexing and ranking, BUT that does not mean “mobile-only.” There’s still a single index with both mobile and desktop versions so best to get both right and no better time than now.
- Page speed – Google’s nuts about delivering the best UX and delivering it fast. Desktop page loading time has been a ranking factor for a while. And it recently got a twin sibling – mobile page speed’s become a ranking factor for mobile. Perhaps time to speak to your hosting provider about that loading time?
- Structured data – With the rise of AI this is becoming more and more important. If Google wants to move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world, structured data is key. Time to start looking at and understanding structured data, schema, active and passive search behaviors, and how they can connect to behaviors that signal intent.
- Increate your E-A-T– Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness – better known as E-A-T in Google’s search quality rating guidelines. Hire experts to author and leverage data from known entities, and ensure credentials and credit is given to both, OR get more of your employees to blog, write, and speak. That is the level of expertise that Google is looking for to power their results.
- The techie stuff – don’t forget the technical side of SEO. Three words: Speed (your page should definitely load under 3 sec), JavaScript (here to stay, so familiarise yourself), Progressive Web Apps/PAW’s (start thinking about how your website can live on as a PAW in the future).
Good luck!
Affiliate Management Team
