If you’re hoping to achieve higher search rankings with your business’s website this year, you need to use the right search engine optimization (SEO) tactics. Now that 2019 here, you can expect to see several new SEO trends emerge. And by incorporating these trends into your business’s SEO strategy, you’ll stay on top of the search results to benefit from increased organic traffic and overall brand visibility.
#1) Voice Search
It’s estimated that more than half of all internet searches will be performed using voice by 2020. As a business owner, you should capitalize on this trend by targeting voice search users with your SEO strategy. This involves building authoritative, content-filled pages centering around conversational keywords rather than traditional short-tail keywords.
#2) Featured Snippets
Featuring snippets have taken over Google’s search results. According to a study conducted by Ahrefs, about 12.29% of all searches performed on Google yield a featured snippet at the top. Also referred to an answer box, a featured snippet is a box at the top of Google’s search results that contains specific information about the user’s search query. Because they are found above all organic search results, they are considered prime real estate for SEO targeting.
#3) Related Questions
In addition to featured snippets, you’ll also see more related questions being displayed in Google’s search results. Not to be confused with featured snippets, related questions are links to other web pages related to the Google user’s search query. They are labeled as “People Also Ask,” and they typically appear under the first or second organic listing.
#4) Non-Google Search Engines
Google isn’t expected to forfeit its title of the world’s most popular search engine anytime soon, but you should still optimize your business’s website for other search engines. A report published by Arch Technica found that one in three of all U.S. internet searches are performed on the Microsoft-owned search engine. Additionally, many people now use the privacy-friendly DuckDuckGo search engine, which processes about 30 million searches daily.
#5) Structured Data
Search engines are expanding the use of structured data to improve the optimize the way in which they list websites in their respective index. Also known as rich snippets, structured data is back-end information that tells search engines what a web page is about. Using it in your business’s SEO strategy can make your website stand out among its competitors, thereby generating more clicks and higher rankings.
#6) User Performance Metrics
Since Google released the Hummingbird update to its search ranking algorithm, there’s been a greater emphasis on user performance metrics for SEO. To succeed with SEO, you must now achieve strong user performance metrics with your business’s website, including a high click-through rate (CTR), low bounce rate and a high average session duration.
