2019 SEO Tactics for Better Ranking in Search

Trying to get your website a better ranking in search? Get the best SEO tactics in 2019 to make sure your website has the best chance of ranking.

2019 SEO Tactics for Better Ranking

You may have noticed that trying to get your website to rank better in search engines hasn’t gotten easier.

Technology, AI and User Experience have reshaped and ultimately improved online search, but man has it become so much more difficult to rank. As technology continues to advance with features like voice search, brand focus and search intent — competition is only going to get more fierce.

That doesn’t even take into consideration the amount of new websites being created daily.

 

image source: https://www.internetlivestats.com

 

Remember, all these things create new challenges that SEO specialists and website owners need to be prepared for.

 

In this post I’m going to discuss the most important SEO tactics businesses are using in 2019 to get their websites better ranking in search engines.

 

1. User Intent Optimization

 

In the marketing world, (scratch that — in the real world), it is highly essential for website owners to optimize their site according to the user’s interest.

Way too many websites are optimized for ‘keywords’ and NOT user experience. So, before attempting to optimize your site for better ranking, you should optimize for what your customers want and what the scope of their query will be.

A great example of how brand, location and user intent influences search results is the query for “Skoda Scala”:

In the US, you might think that was a typo for some kind of soda or cola product, but to the rest of the world this is a well known automotive brand and the search results provided will cover;

  • News about the new car model
  • Reviews of a new car on the market
  • Places where you can buy a car

The search algorithms of today try their best to understand what exactly to serve up in search results based on the phrasing of the query.

search query example 

2. Voice Search And Virtual Assistants

 

Desktop search will still be around for a while, but with greater use of mobile devices, people are naturally shifting towards voice search.

In the next two years, it is assumed that one-third of online traffic will shift toward the voice search.

Remember, for the massive tangible transition from the set of keywords in a search engine to voice communication with smart devices cannot happen overnight. But the process has already begun. So, in order to see your website rank better, right now is the time to keep up with the curve.

the rise of voice search

24 percent of US households own a smart speaker, and 40 percent of those households own multiple speakers, according to Nielsen’s latest study.

 

3. Local SEO in the Spotlight

local seo

According to Google statistics,

58% of people who used the voice search used it to find information about a local business or place of interest.

Most of them include the phrase “next to me” or “near me”, and the results are derived from search engine by geolocation technology.

 

This is just one of the facts that confirm the importance of local SEO, which is waiting for everyone in the near future. Essentially, your website is the virtual location of your business, and the means by which 60 percent of American adults conduct searches for local services.

Local SEO is not a novelty,

 

78 percent of local-based searches on a mobile device end in purchases being made offline.

71 percent of people who have been surveyed have said they search for the location of a business in order to confirm its existence before going there for a first-time visit.

1 in 3 searches on a smartphone was conducted just before arriving at a store.

 

Google My Business and Yandex the Handbook makes it possible to clearly mark the position of your office on Maps and add a detailed description, high-quality photos and display extended information about the company in the search results.

 

4. Artificial Intelligence in Search Algorithms

ai

Image: Syfi

Anytime AI is mentioned, this is the first thing that always comes to mind…

In reality, AI in search is really machine learning focused on improving the user experience.

AI is making it easier for people to do things every day, whether it’s searching for photos of loved ones, breaking down language barriers in Google Translate, typing emails on the go, or getting things done with the Google Assistant. ~Google

Machine learning algorithms have been changing the SEO landscape dramatically, and largely for the better.

For the most part, AI allows users to get better search results — faster.

AI hasn’t necessarily made it easier for SEO service providers to achieve better ranking in search. It gets a lot trickier to do everything as per a search engine’s guidelines while designing your website for the best user experience.

 

Site owners who do not violate the rules of search engines have nothing to fear from them, however; they also have gained nothing from them.  For businesses who truly want better ranking in search, it’s going to be essential to focus on understanding the intentions of users, work on improving usability, and creating high-quality naturally written content that is better than their competitors.

 

5. Increasing Snippets CTR

 

In addition to the contextual advertising, Google or other major search engines show data from various proprietary services like YouTube videos, image searches, products from the Market, knowledge graph, etc. Moreover, Google also added snippets with extended answers.

How to get better rankings

Obviously, one of the big takeaways here is that featured snippets dramatically reduce click through to your website.

Because of this, it is extremely important to work on the snippets Clickability, so that you can maximize clickthrough with that top rank visibility. And for this you need:

  • Make the Title and Description attractive and interesting for users
  • Include calls to action
  • Use micro marking, special characters and emoji
  • Constantly analyze competitors snippets and strives to get better results.

 

6. Mentions: Brand as a Ranking Signal

 

Mentioning a brand on various sites confirms its credibility to the users. Moreover, distributing information about the company helps the web owners to generate referral traffic while building brand image in the eyes of search algorithms.

There are different ways to increase the number of reference to the brand. Some of them are:

  • Product reviews on blogs
  • Content marketing on external sites
  • Attracting bloggers to the PR campaign
  • Distribution of fragmented content, such as photos, videos, PDF books, etc.

Most likely, search engines increase the weight of all these factors, since their correlation with the quality of possible answers is quite obvious.

 

7. Invest in Technical SEO

 

Investing in technical SEO is the main focus in 2019.

Digital Muscle, a leading SEO company in Australia recently identified some of the following key areas critical to technical SEO and better ranking:

  • Basically, Google considers the download speed when ranking and penalizes very slow resources. So, in 2019, the main focus of every web owner must be on their website’s downloading speed. As no customer waits for more than 10 seconds to download the page.
  • JavaScript: Experts suggest that the sites which are more focused on javascript, will help you to familiarize yourself with this programming language and learn how search engines work with such sites.
  • Progressive Web Applications (PWA): PWA is a version of the site that works offline, you can add it to your phone screen as an application. These days, many companies do not need it, but in 2019 it is worth thinking about how the project will work in such a format as users want to add it into their smartphone’s shortcut screen.

 

Summing up

 

As SEO evolves, you can’t expect to do just one thing well and get those top rankings. Instead, you need to focus on your brand and every device or channel in which your audience can be reached. The 7 SEO tactics described in this post are the tactics your business should focus on in order to provide a high-quality positive experience to your visitors. This will help you to achieve your brand success and deliver positive results moving forward through 2019.