5 Key SEO Tactics and Trends in 2019

Looking ahead to this year’s upcoming online marketing trends can be daunting and exciting in equal measure. Visualising your success and planning your strategy, though also accepting you are not in for an easy ride.

Nevertheless, the better idea you have of what is to come, the better your chance of making it work in your favour. With this in mind, here is a brief overview of the five key SEO tactics and trends to keep in mind going into 2019:

1. Increased Visibility Competition
The first entry is also the most obvious and arguably the most important of all. Every year, visibility competition grows at its fastest rate. And 2019 looks to be no exception. The search engines are evolving and space at the top is becoming ever more confined. In online marketing stakes, the phrase
survival of the fittest” has never been more appropriate.

2. Old School SEO Tactics Will Lose Value 
You will still need to have a strategy with your on-page SEO, but relying exclusively on old-school methods is just not going to cut it in 2019. Instead, it will be more about the all-round customer experience and the level to which you can foster a sense of genuine engagement with your web audience. On-page SEO will always play a role, it is simply a case of accepting you cannot rely on it alone.

3. Growth of Voice Search
As far as the industry watchers are concerned, more than half of all online searches will use voice search by 2020. Which is only a year away. Which should be a concern for anybody who is yet to give any thought to voice search optimisation whatsoever. Incredibly, the most popular voice assistants on the market today have achieved an understanding accuracy of more than 90% on average. If you are not yet giving thought to voice search, you are in danger of falling behind.

4. Mobile-Optimised Websites Will Gain Value
What this means is that Google and the other major search engines have begun the process of assessing pages and websites firstly from a mobile perspective. This essentially means that if you want your website to rank higher in 2019, you will need to give mobile SEO more time and focus. If you don’t, your content will not add as much value as it could and your SEO performance will suffer.

5. There Is Life Beyond Google
Last but not least, it has never been more important to realise the fact that Google is not where the buck starts and stops when it comes to SEO. It is the biggest and most important by all means, but it is not the only search engine at all. What is more, Bing has started gaining significant traction by occupying a bigger share of the search market in 2018. Therefore, you may want to stop putting all your SEO eggs in the same proverbial basket.

Six SEO Myths to Ignore

SEO may have been around for decades now, but the concept remains a subject of confusion for millions of businesses worldwide. Every year, we’re bombarded with a completely fresh set of ‘rules’ and ‘best practices’ that can supposedly maximise the value of an SEO strategy.

Not to mention, all manner of myths and untruths – some of which are downright dangerous.

So just to illustrate how things are looking from a 2019 perspective, here’s a brief rundown of six dangerous SEO myths that are still doing the rounds with gusto right now:

1. Quality content alone is more than enough

First up, you cannot and will not achieve SEO glory without plenty of outstanding content. Nevertheless, you cannot run an effective SEO campaign on quality content alone. Content matters – and matters a lot – but is nonetheless just one of many components you need to address. Try to avoid putting all of your eggs in the same proverbial basket.


2. It’s all about the keywords

Likewise, getting too bogged down with keywords in general isn’t a good idea. Keywords are a critical element of the successful SEO strategy, but cramming in as many as possible and damaging the quality of your content in doing so is a risky tactic. Not to mention, the kind of tactic that doesn’t tend to curry favour these days with any of the major search engines.

3. More pages = better rankings

Contrary to popular belief, more pages will not necessarily guarantee more prominent SERP positioning. Unless the pages add genuine value and quality to your website, they won’t do a great deal for your SEO profile at all. Creating more pages simply for the sake of it is a common tactic, though one that’s unlikely to do you any favours.

4. Pictures are pointless

Just because search engine spiders cannot yet crawl the content of website pictures doesn’t mean they’re without value. The reason being that all major search engines now take into account various aspects of the user experience, which includes the provision of a rich mixture of media. What’s more, SEO-rich file names and alt-tags can and should be used to your advantage.

5. Mobile focus is overrated

If anything, it’s the exact opposite. Evidence suggests that not nearly enough business owners worldwide are yet giving mobile focus the attention it deserves. With mobile web traffic having comfortably overtaken desktop traffic, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the importance of mobile SEO focus.

6. It’s not necessary to hire help

Last but not least, it’s highly unlikely that any in-house effort that lacks extensive specialist expertise is going to get the job done properly. It just isn’t going to happen. Contemporary SEO is an infinitely more complex and challenging concept than it was even just a couple of years ago. You can’t make things up as you go along and expect to get by – nor can you rely on a half-cooked strategy to deliver positive results. If you’re serious about making the most of your SEO strategy, hiring help comes highly recommended.

Smart Content Marketing

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to content marketing is the following:

Every web user presently online around the globe is online for a specific reason.

There is a surprising number of businesses that assume that every second web user is online with no specific purpose in mind whatsoever. Drifting around with no requirements or intention, thus wide open to their tempting offers and suggestions. The reality, however, is much different.

Whether it is for socialising, entertainment purposes, seeking services or researching products of any kind, there is always a reason for going online. This in turn means that to some extent at least, there is something specific every person in question is looking for.

Exactly who fulfils their requirements and expectations comes down to one simple thing and one thing alone – quality content.

Value and Quality

Online webmasters and businesses in general can throw all the hype they want at their target audiences. But without genuine value and quality to back it up, it is an exercise in futility. Above everything else, the crucial thing to remember when implementing a content marketing strategy is that web users will always respond best to websites that are providing them with some sort of help.

It can be help filling some minutes with quality entertainment, help with researching services and products, help with buying services and products and so on. Web users in general like to know that after each engagement or experience with an online entity, they come away better off.

Which is exactly why the most successful content is that which delivers benefits and value of some kind. How-to guides, tutorials, infographics or pretty much anything unique that can’t be found elsewhere.

Web marketers who exist for the sole reason to separate consumers from their hard earned money rarely find success – those who try to satisfy the needs of their audience usually perform much better.

The Psychology of Selling

Studies and the experience of millions of online businesses worldwide remind us that strong customer relationships could be forged if you help them solve a problem. If you’re willing to offer support and advice that is relevant, useful, transparent and accessible, you will stand a greater chance of standing out as a leader and authority in your field.

This means that next time they need any support or help along the same lines, they will most likely gravitate in your direction.

In a way, it is the classic example of selling without really selling in practice. Rather than bombarding your audience members with marketing materials, you are instead focusing on what they really want. And by doing so, you stand out from the crowd as an authority in your field.

So rather than focusing on and investing in the kind of hype that will most likely lead to nothing, think about how your business and your website could provide valuable and genuine help, for the benefit of your web users.

Why Buying Web Traffic Is Rarely a Good Idea

All websites could benefit from a little more traffic. Irrespective of how successful your online business may be, more is always better. After all, no right-minded business owner would happily turn down the prospect of additional sales.

With competition in all sectors at an all-time high, businesses worldwide are resorting to various weird and wonderful tactics to boost web traffic. One of which being to buy traffic in bulk.

 

On paper, it sounds like a relatively simple tactic with obvious appeal. You hand your cash over to a service provider, who in turn sends a predetermined number of visitors your way. It could be 5,000, 50,000 or even 500,000 visitors – a quick, easy and affordable boost that could make a huge difference.

Or at least, so it seems.

Think of it this way – if it was really so easy and effective to buy web traffic, wouldn’t we all be doing it? Or to put it another way, if it was possible to buy all the web traffic you need at an affordable price, why waste money on conventional marketing and advertising?

The short answer is the obvious answer – it isn’t quite as easy as it seems. In fact, it’s comparatively rare for buying web traffic to be an advisable course of action.

The following four reasons going some way to explain why:

1. Zero targeting

First of all, there’s nothing to gain by sending a whole bunch of entirely untargeted traffic to your website. Sending hundreds of thousands of visitors your way is all well and good, but what if not a single one of these visitors have any real interest in what it is you do? Unqualified prospects are about as much use to your business as no prospects whatsoever. Hence, any traffic you buy that isn’t meticulously targeted may prove to have zero value.

2. Heavy penalties

In most instances, those who sell bulk web traffic provide their services by way of automated bots. Or to put it another way, the visitors that come your way aren’t in fact visitors at all. At least, not the kinds of human visitors of any real value to your business. Not only does this mean little to no positive impact, it also leaves you and your website wide open to heavy penalties. When the likes of Google and the other major search engines detect these kinds of tactics, they’re not in the habit of letting them go unpunished.

3. Scam potential

This is also an area of the digital marketing spectrum that is rife with scam tactics. Find yourself at the mercy of a substandard service provider and the consequences could be catastrophic.

4. No guarantees
Along with all this, there are absolutely no guarantees that you won’t be wasting every penny of your investment. They may promise to deliver hundreds of thousands of profitable visitors, but there are no guarantees they’ll deliver even one. And if you’re unhappy with their services, there’s precisely nothing you can do about it.

If you want to drive more visitors to your website, there are hundreds of safer and more effective avenues to explore. Nevertheless, if you do decide to go ahead and buy website traffic in bulk, you need to be extremely careful when choosing a provider.