Every year, new marketing trends prove to be more successful than others. With new technology coming onto the scene all the time, it’s hard to know exactly how well your chosen strategy will hold up. Eventually, your strategies for promoting your business will need to adjust to modern tactics, or you risk falling behind your competition.
SEO expert Walid Juma of Juma Digital agrees that the competition is fiercer than ever, especially when it comes to getting results.
“It is getting harder to show results to clients faster nowadays. Clients always want the results to show instantly,” he reports.
So will your SEO hold up as technology develops, or will you find yourself falling short? Here are the SEO tactics experts expect to do well moving forward; take a look to see if your marketing campaigns match up.
Artificial Intelligence Moving Forward
As technology improves, people are going to be using the internet in ever-changing ways. Don’t believe it? Just take Mike Khorev’s word for it.
“We can expect [A.I.] to be even bigger in 2019: we can save a lot of time and costs in understanding our customers with the help of A.I. We see applications like A.I.-driven content curation to programmatic advertising placements that will continue to rise in popularity. In short, businesses that capitalize on A.I. in marketing can generate better results why maximizing cost-efficiency,” Khorev, founder of I Know SEO, says.
More often nowadays, people aren’t even using traditional search engine results. Instead, they’re making use of artificial intelligence like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Echo. In these cases, you’ll need to have your SEO optimized to work with these technologies, rather than against them.
“Digital assistants will dramatically affect the way consumers search,” according to Kent Lewis of Anvil Media Inc. “How consumers verbally communicate significantly varies from how individuals type out search queries. Because of this variation in behavior, you will begin to see more long-tail keyword queries.”
What does this mean for your keywords and SEO tactics? Likely, you’ll be able to include more specific keywords and improve your accuracy with your search engine results. In particular, look to your product descriptions; they’ll likely be directly impacted by voice search capabilities.
“Content that answers questions about your products and services will help you rank higher on search engine results,” says Ashish Dua of Canbay Inc.
Mixed Media Makes Waves
In the world of internet marketing, there are always new venues to explore, with more being created daily. The internet is ever-evolving, as is the content that users expect. And now, there’s more accessibility than ever for consumers and business owners alike.
“Regardless of whether you’re in branding, advertising or marketing, digital now provides direct access to the market who for the first time are able to demonstrate authentic buying decision making in a way that is trackable. The data digital provides gives brands and their owners irrefutable answers to what is the right value proposition, packaging, or brand name,” says David Ansett of Truly Deeply.
While originally a few blog posts would be enough to cut it, this might not be the case anymore. Internet users are expecting a wider variety of content every day, and your business needs to be ready to cater to that interest.
And according to Dennis Kubitz of Beckiano, it’s every SEO company’s responsibility to keep a close eye on changing consumer interests.
“Digital Marketing changes monthly and it’s our job to stay on top of it,” Kubitz says.
How do you achieve this, then? Look to trending forms of media to see what your consumers are spending their digital time on, and focus your energy towards that. This includes multimedia formats in particular, as videos and podcasts continue to draw user attention.
“Podcast guesting is a real SEO powerhouse,” says Ken Tucker of Changescape Web. “The guest gets a lot of benefits – exposure to an existing audience, authority as a guest, multi-channel promotion by the podcaster, a high quality inbound link from a relevant site, and content that they can SEO on their website.”
Back To Basics
While some experts are focusing on developing your strategy to work with newer technologies and interests, others are focusing more on returning to the timeless essentials of SEO to strengthen the core of your marketing campaigns online. These experts expect that despite the many ongoing changes in the digital marketing world, the basics of online marketing, if done correctly, will keep you going strong from trend to trend.
“Website user experience must be focused on in 2019,” says Todd Thornton of Techsan Media. He suggests focusing on “site speed, [making] information easily found, decluttering your site, [and] easy access to conversion tools like click to call or text or contact forms.” By focusing on the basic principles of SEO, you should be able to advance your keyword rankings without being thrown by constantly shifting internet trends.
However, don’t forget that SEO isn’t entirely about your keywords. “It’s all about user intent,” says Rafael Romis of Weberous. “We have to think about what users want to find based on their search and create a page and content that gives them just that. That’s how you outrank the competition.”
The Best Solution For Long-Term Success
Ultimately, there’s no one right way to do SEO. Because digital marketing as a field is constantly shifting as internet technology itself develops, no one technique for going about internet marketing is going to be a sure bet. However, combining multiple tactics in your SEO proposal template, from integrating voice search to using new media formats to returning to classic organic SEO staples, can help ensure that your digital marketing campaigns will withstand the test of time.
