Google’s continually investing to be at the top. SEOs are seeking to adapt to changes that follow. That’s how SEO trends are born. In this article, we will learn five SEO trends of the most Importance in 2019.

To be the very best, you must think in advance about your SEO strategy. A shortcut to success: learn what are the upcoming trends and work out an action plan for each one.

This year, Google shook the world with its efforts focusing on mobile and speed. This will undoubtedly result in, most of next year’s SEO efforts continuing in this direction. However, a few “non-Google” game-changers will influence as well on how we build our SEO campaigns. Let’s analyse these important SEO trends for 2019 and ways to embrace and comprehend them.

1. Mobile-first indexing

Generally speaking, mobile-first indexing means that Google focuses on the mobile version of your page when it comes to indexing and ranking. This started in March 2018, and Google’s begun the process of migrating sites with a focus on a mobile-first index. Your Search Console has probably already notified you about it.

This does not necessarily mean mobile-first exclusively. The index for both desktop and mobile indexes is still being used. However, only when the site has migrated will the Google focus on using the mobile-first index for ranking.

So when your mobile version is the one being used for ranking, you will have to focus on mobile friendliness more

Plan of Action From Top Rating SEO:

Whichever mobile version you choose is okay. Just take into account a few things. John Mueller, the Google’s Trends Analyst, said: “If you want to go responsive, better do it before the mobile-first launch”. It means if you haven’t migrated to mobile, you should do it right away. Plus, Google does not recommend m-dot and responsive to the same page, because it confuses crawlers.
To comprehend on how search engine spiders view your mobile pages, use a mobile bot to crawl them. Website Auditor is one of those you can use:

Take an interest in your website’s loading speed. PageSpeed Insights can help you with that.
Check from time to time if users of your pages are completely satisfied. In WebSite Auditor there’s mobile performance section which you can use to do this.

2. The Speed of the Page

The primary focus of Google is that they need to deliver the best UX and to do it extremely fast. The loading time of the desktop pages was a factor in ranking for some time. In July, it was intertwined with another – the speed of mobile page version started to be that other factor.

It is this change that makes you think which are the factors you need to take into account when it comes to Google’s page speed evaluation.

Usually, when analyzed using PageSpeed Insights, one’s site was evaluated only on basic technical parameters. Nowadays, desktop as well as mobile, are graded by these two new metrics: Optimization and, a new metric – Speed.

The part that changes the game is the way in which Speed score is generated. This metric is from Chrome User Experience report, which is a database from the real users’ performance. It’s reflected on how your site loads for each visitor. Since it is hard to measure correctly how fast each visitor’s device loads your site, the result is that the metric is impossible to get through local tests. You can control the Optimization score by fixing all the issues and preventing the site to load fast.

So, which metric can have the most substantial influence on your rankings? According to the mobile page speed experiment that conducted the SEO Powersuite, the relationship is strong (0.97)between the page’s Optimization score and its position in SERPs. But, there is no correlation between the page’s position and its Speed score. Which means, now Google can rate your site as slow, but your rankings will stay the same.

On the other hand, Speed metric is something that is new, so it’s evident that Google’s testing it. Give it time and, those correlations will probably change.

Plan of action from Top Rating SEO:

Now, what matters for rankings is Optimization score. Luckily, the good thing is that site optimization and result tracking are entirely in your hands. Google’s nicely provided with a whole list of handy recommendations. There is also a guide with more details on how to improve your score of Optimization to which you can refer.

3. Ranking signal – Brand

One of the Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, Gary Illyes, at Pubcon said that Google uses online brand mentions in its algorithm for searching. in two ways brand can be used as a ranking signal.

One, through brand mentions which are unlinked: this is when the search engine acknowledged your brand as an entity. By analysing every single mention of it, Google creates a sketch of your importance in that particular field.

Two, every single sentiment and context has a specific effect: advertising, trust, reputation, etc. Understanding the context, Google differentiates good from the bad. For example, its Search Quality Guidelines plainly say that reputation has an impact on rankings. Because of that, the way of people’s reactions to the brand directly affects its rankings.

The Plan of action from Top Rating SEO:

The Backlinks still have one of the heaviest impacts on ranking. However, rapidly creating links isn’t an “honourable” thing to do. You should focus on using the backlinks which are linkless. Which means that you should always mention your brand when you can.
Take care about your reputation. We cannot stress how important it is. Focus on the negative experiences that customers have with your brand but as well interact with those that are happy with it. To do so, you’ll have to track online mentions of your brand. The tool – Awario is the best one when you want to find out about linkless mentions through the World Wide Web.

Take into account influencers that are willing to talk about you or that are already talking about it. The Awario tool can be useful here as well.
Mind the competition. De-structuring their strategies and figuring their ways will help you view your SEO efforts from various angles and help you make your job easier. For that, focus on their brand mentions and find out in which way they managed to increase the awareness. Another thing you can do is find out about their weaknesses and strengths.

4. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

General Data Protection Regulation is something that the European Union passed. The thing it regulates is the ownership of the data which was created by users online interactions. Corporations no longer collect it, and the user is one doing it. Therefore, every user can now request from any company with which he or she interacted the data they have about him or her, alter that data or export it. For refusing to comply, companies have to pay outstanding fees ranging from €20 million to 4% of the company’s annual income.

EU companies and customers are the ones affected by this regulation, but international companies are supposed to respect it and comply with it. Because of this Google has made alterations to their Analytics. All user data has an expiration date, and it’s 26months from the moment of collection. In this data is included demographic and affinity data, earlier kept permanently. But this doesn’t include sessions and goal completions. However, collection, default period can be changed by each site owner. Furthermore, individual users can request to delete their personal data.

Plan of action from Las Vegas SEO Expert:

If you don’t have any customers from Europe:

You can change to the “do not automatically expire” option in Google Analytics. Be careful, because that is how Google shakes off the user data protection responsibility on you. Plus, these user data control efforts will probably in the future extend outside the EU. Just wait, and you’ll see.

If you have customers from Europe or plan to have:
Review all the sources that are collecting the data from users on your site. Be careful not to send on accident some private data to Google Analytics;
Keep your Privacy policy file updated by GDPR requirements;
Revise your cookie consent form. It should have the following content: the kind of information you collect, why you collect it, where you store the information, and affirmation that the information is well secured;
Activate IP anonymisation when you use Google Tag Manager. Not to worry, you will still have a general idea where your traffic comes from. It just will be a bit less precise.

5. Amazon search

First things first, Amazon’s a search engine that is not a universal one. It’s an algorithm similar to Google’s, but it is used for internal search within Amazon pages. What’s the fuss about then? Well, more and more people buy straight from Amazon when doing shopping. According to one study, 56% of consumers visit Amazon first if they have shopping in mind. 51% of them will check on the Amazon after finding something elsewhere.

These figures tell us that Amazon’s becoming equivalent to Google when it comes to e-commerce. In other words, that means that if you are selling something and you’re not doing it on Amazon, you won’t have those 56% of potential customers.

Moreover, if your occupation is selling books, music, electronics, etc., you should include in your SEO strategy the optimisation for Amazon.

Plan of action from Top Rating SEO:
Research Keywords: To be more industry-wise, you can use Amazon itself. For example, use Rank Tracker – which has Amazon Autocomplete keyword research tool:

Item’s title and description should be made efficient and user-friendly (+ smart use of keywords);
Provide high-quality images;
Cater to “backend keywords” (in Google terms these are called meta tags). They tell Amazon algorithm that a specific item targets a particular keyword on the site;
Track customers’ reviews and address complaints.

Looking at the year ahead

There are few trends, but the changes are significant. No matter the fact that all things related to mobile are going far, we still need to keep an eye on consequences related the Amazon and GDPR. The list is still just a prediction, and we have a billion things to discuss in the following 2019. What do you think about the SEO and Marketing landscape for the new year?