What Will Be The Hot SEO Topics In The Year Ahead?
Every passing year brings subtle changes to the SEO landscape. How will the innovations of 2018 affect the digital marketing strategies of 2019?
One of the most dangerous yet common blunders in the corporate world is to see SEO as a “set it and forget it” procedure, something to which a business can dedicate some one-off time and resources, before sitting back and congratulating itself on a job well done. To be effective, SEO needs to be an ongoing process, with a strategy that is in a constant state of refinement and improvement.
Digital marketing strategies and the corporate SEO services that deliver them are influenced by changing trends, be it in the behaviour of a business’s target market, the technology it is using or the algorithms used by Google and other search engines. Here are some of the factors that will play an important role in the year ahead.
Chatbots And AI
The 24/7 nature of online business and the fact that customers favour live chat above all other forms of contact have combined to make chatbots increasingly important. Providing after-hours customer service beyond a list of FAQs means happier customers, better conversions and improved SEO.
AI is one of the most rapidly developing aspects of digital technology, and the ability of chatbots to interact with humans and provide valuable responses is improving by the day.
Voice Search
Anyone who assumed Alexa was going to be the technological equivalent of Chesney Hawkes has been proven wrong. Voice search is here to stay, and has caused some fundamental shifts in the way we approach SEO. Inevitably, people use different phrasing and terminology when speaking than they do when writing a search query. They are more likely to ask a question than to simply say a keyword phrase, in the way they might when typing something into Google.
Exact search terms and long tail keywords are the order of the day when optimising for voice.
Live Video
Content is king, every SEO knows that. But the form that content is taking is changing rapidly. As social media shares have grown in importance, so has the necessity to create content that truly captures the imagination and gets people talking. Video is always going to trump text content in that respect, and live video even more so.
From the moment the social media platforms started promoting live video content, forward-thinking businesses saw that there was more to this than just teenagers making their friends jealous by streaming footage from a concert. Even for those who think they have more of a face for radio, live video is a tool that will be just too important to ignore in 2019.
Remember The Basics
While these new dimensions of SEO can make a big difference, they must not be at the expense of the fundamental building blocks. Solid keyword analysis, great content creation and regular monitoring of a site’s technical SEO form the foundations on which all else is based. Neglect these, and the whole strategy will go nowhere.
