What Is Your SEO Strategy for 2019?
I truly hope that when I ask what is your SEO Strategy for 2019, you don't respond with you don't have one. It's okay, though. Because, even if you don't, I found some resources to help get you started. But, please don't ignore them.
The first resource is from none other than Neil Patel. I have included the video that describes his advice here on this page. If you get nothing else out of the video, be sure to follow the first tip in the video.
That tip basically suggests that while content is king, you need to step it up and write content that no one else is providing. There are too many copycats that are writing about the same tired subjects. Don't do that! Be unique!
The rest of the tips are useful as well. The video is short enough where you have no excuse not to view it. Just saying...
Voice Search
You'll also hear Neil speak about voice search which is something that others have been preaching. This one I am a bit divergent about. While I agree it's important, I am unsure that many people will use it in public places. Think about how annoyed you get when some joker is speaking loudly on his smartphone. Multiply this by many people shouting into their phones to do searches.
Although I don't believe the feature will be as big as everyone is making it out to be, it will be a necessary part of SEO. You can't ignore it. Learn how to incorporate this into your SEO.
Mobile Search
Question: are you on your smartphone more than your computer? If you answered yes to this question, then you are probably like everyone else. If you observe people in public using their smart technology, then you know that mobile search is crucial to your SEO strategy for 2019 and beyond. No ifs, ands, or buts!
What's Changed in SEO Since 2018?
To be honest, if you look back at some posts, you'll see voice search and mobile as two big factors. Wordstream has written about this and as the first item in this post:
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/12/13/seo-hard-truths
They also mentioned in the same article that Google is using machine learning as part of its ranking. If you aren't familiar with the term, in the context of search engines, you can think of it as hyper-focused metrics. The algorithm uses machine learning to adjust and do better with its metrics. This allows any ranking to be more accurate.
What this means for SEO strategies is you'll need to pay more attention to those metrics and try to work with them in your content.
Less Reliance on Guest Blogging
People use guest blogging as a means of getting backlinks. However, these are not as effective as they used to be, all equal. They still work, but should not be the focus or as the main part of your strategy.
Importance of Video
It's interesting that Neil didn't mention video as a factor. It could be because people have accepted as a staple item. However, if you aren't using video, start using video. Period. Remember, just like the video above, you can embed videos from YouTube. Yes, that counts!
Another Blogger Chiming in for 2019 SEO Factor
Another factor is given by the blog Yellow Head, Inc., describes freshness as important. According to the post, Google favors articles that are new for the most part. The author suggests that if you have old posts that are not ranking well, consider updating them so that they become fresh in Google's view.
https://yellowheadinc.com/blog/google-ranking-factors/
I do agree with this to a point. A while back on saw a book on Amazon about of all things, SEO. I am a member of the Kindle Unlimited program and this book was included as part of my membership, so I downloaded it.
The book had some good tips on SEO. Then, at the beginning of 2018, I noticed the same author, published the book with a badge on the cover stating the it was completely updated for 2018. I thought it would be cool to see what changes the author posted. Here's the rub. There were no changes.
It was exactly the same book with the same wording and the techniques were now out-of-date. The author had the audacity to slap on a badge on the cover stating that the book was completely updated.
Now, to me, completely updated means just that. There should be new techniques and the book she be completely different from the original or close to it.
People pull this nonsense with blog posts too. They change a post with an old date to a current one and pass it off as something new. Please don't do this. I agree with updating your posts, but truly update your post with current information. Don't just change the date and republish.
There is another group of bloggers, including influential ones, who are removing the dates from their posts. As a writer/researcher, this is wickedly frustrating. If I have to cite an article I want to know the time frame the author is making references to. Without the date, I don't have a way to know. I simply skip the blog when that happens.
Both scenarios are deceptive in my book. If you're trying to build credibility these are poor ways to do it.
Some people will say that the date doesn't matter with evergreen topics, to which I agree with somewhat. However, even here, I would want to know when the author published those posts to get a frame of reference.
Google's Algorithm Could Flag This Practice
You never know if Google will one day decide it doesn't like the practice of changing dates (without changing content) or hiding the date. In one fell swoop, your posts could be flagged as deceptive and lose ranking.
How would Google know? If you have been reading anything about the search engine, they are increasingly using a concept known as machine learning. Without getting into too much detail about this, it essentially makes searching much more accurate. I know from working a bit with machine learning (I run the website DataScienceReview.com), discovering changes in documents is quite easy to do. In case you don't know, Google has a hand in archive.org, which is better known as the Wayback Machine. It stores old copies of web pages. Therefore, it wouldn't be difficult to compare two versions and let the machine learning algorithm determine how much has significantly changed.
Conclusion
SEO is important and you need to make sure you create out-of-this-world content. Try to find information that others have not yet published, but you know will be useful to your readers. Pay attention to mobile and voice search. Use the information in this post about freshness for your website. When you update old posts, do right by your readers and truly update that content.
