It seems as if the number of articles predicting SEO trends seem to spike towards the fourth quarter of the year. While I’m no SEO expert, I do enjoy reading about them and trying to figure out which ones may come true and which may not.
Based on my humble SEO research over the last few weeks, I would like to write a post highlighting the SEO trends that I believe would rise to prominence over the next 12 months.
User Experience
One of the biggest trends that I predict will come to pass in 2019 is that user experience will become even more important when it comes to improving a site’s search engine rankings. Google has made many announcements about this and they have warned webmasters over and over again to try to improve their websites’ user experience.
Webmasters need to focus on areas such as improving the site’s page load speed, readability and its information architecture so as to provide their website visitors with a much better on-site experience.
One method that I keep hearing about is conducting user testing. This involves getting actual users to browse through your website and letting you know if they encounter any issues performing pre-assigned tasks.
Mobile Search
Most of us would know that Google recently launched their mobile-first index that places the focus on searches conducted on mobile devices.
While mobile searches have been increasing rapidly over the last few years, this marks the beginning of a new era. If you are running a website, you now know that you cannot let mobile be an afterthought. In fact, for some niches such as publishing, you will have many more mobile visitors than desktop visitors.
The way that people search on mobile devices is also different from the way that they would search on a desktop. This means that you need to conduct proper keyword research to ensure that your keywords will show up in the SERPs.
Voice Search
With the rise of the smart home, we will start to see even more devices being powered by artificial intelligence or digital assistants such as Siri or Google Assistant.
Since many people conduct searches using their voices, this will mark the rise of voice search.
The keywords that are being used for voice searches are different from those being used on desktop searches. For example, there will be much more long tail searches and more natural language will be used.