In part one of our series on How to Capitalise Off The SEO Trends That Will Dominate 2019, we discussed voice search, video keywords, mobile first indexing, high-quality content and securing your website. As a Halifax-based SEO agency, we were very happy to see the local response to this article and decided to push out the second part early!
The constant changes that are made to Google’s algorithm mean that your marketing strategy needs to be versatile and that you can’t put all your hopes on one tactic for success with your SEO. This means experimenting with different techniques and finding a balance between them to create a strategy that works for your business.
Today, we are going to look at a few more trends that will be sweeping across SEO over the next few months to enable you to start your path to success in 2019. Remember, most of these are not one-time things and you will need to be consistent to see the benefits of these techniques.
Great UX Design
The experience of your users is very important for your SEO strategy to work as if you put all this effort in to appeal to search engines and forget about humans, you won’t generate more business. A recent study found that 70% of customers learn about your company through your website and not your advertising and over 80% of users prefer a seamless experience across all platforms when browsing your website.
Some ways you can optimise your user experience design to make it more friendly is to make layout and navigation easy to understand and clearly define the information that’s being read. This will help to reduce the bounce rate of your website and increase the value of your website in the eyes of search engines, as well as satisfying your customers. You can also utilise call-to-actions (CTAs) that lead your customers on the journey you want them to go on to convert into more leads and sales for your business.
Marketing through Influencers
For a while now, influencer marketing has been something that has been steadily growing and you will see popular celebrities on Instagram endorsing products with sponsored posts. The companies that have utilised this technique have seen an incredible amount of success, particularly in beauty, as fans want to use the same products as their idols. Studies suggest that over 60% of marketing experts believe that influencer marketing is key to reaching a niche target audience and you will find these influencers of Instagram almost exclusively.
To take advantage of this tactic, you will either need a lot of money to invest in marketing or be very convincing get influencers to give you backlinks and recommendations. This comes down to content creation and keyword targeting to reach your desired audience through the influencers in your industry. You need to be smart with how you do this and the best way to do it is through compliments and asking for help, this helps influencers feel loved and makes them more likely to expose you to more people who are looking for your products and services.
Long-Form Content
We have seen a lot of success with our clients when it comes to writing long-form content but creating it is a lot of work and requires dedication. People want helpful information and if a company can provide that, they will be more likely to come back to them in the future and use their products and services. In fact, over 50% more leads are generated from inbound tactics than advertising. However, 70% of marketers lack the consistency of an integrated content strategy. This is why it can make such a difference to your business, roughly on 30% of businesses actually utilise it in their strategy, leaving plenty of space for your business to creep in.
So, how can you implement long-form content into your strategy? Firstly, don’t extend the word count of your content for the heck of it, additional content should provide value to your audience, so put thought into your blog posts and pages. You should also give your content a clear structure that is engaging by creating a visual hierarchy and utilising imagery and videos. This will make your content easier to digest and even come back to if it is a particularly long piece of content.
