Last year, Google went through a major update. It transformed Search Engine Optimization (SEO) from just simply applying keywords to a content piece into a complete informative science.

Do you wonder how it happened?

In the last five years, Google algorithm has undergone frequent changes, transforming it into something smarter, more agile, and precise. That happened because akin to any other website on the Internet, Google is also inclined towards delivering a better user experience to its users.

With the advent of smartphones, mobile search has increasingly become common. Introduction to AI and Machine Learning has opened new doors. And therefore, all of these recent changes have significantly changed the trends of SEO more.

Do we often wonder what these changes are and how they are going to transform SEO in the year 2019? Are you also eager to learn about them? Let’s find out.

1) Optimizing Voice Search

Entering into the new era, we have observed that the use of Voice Search has become quite common. Siri, Alexa, and similar electronic voice control software have become rather common where people are commonly found asking questions such as, “where is the nearest custom pawn shop?” or “how should I find the best robot vacuum cleaner?”

Therefore, watching this technology at its peak, organizations and brands are now presenting information on the Internet in a way so they can answer these simple questions to solve user queries on the go. Websites are now publishing web copy, blogs, and sales copy which can help resolve a potential problem of a client or customer.

Optimizing Voice Search is a developing trend among modern day SEO individuals.

2) Optimizing Amazon Search

This trend is generally for all those who are eager to optimize their e-commerce store products. There are two ways to sell products on Amazon; you can either allow Amazon to sell your product for you or you can become a third party seller and sell the products on Amazon. Besides, Amazon has become a powerful search engine which is directly competing with Google or Bing any given day.

If you desire to purchase a product, Amazon can be your one-stop-shop-for-all. For every product, it shows reviews and comparisons. It provides recommendations on which product is good for you.

Now, this can be a fantastic opportunity for SEO specialists as they can optimize keywords accordingly. The future trend in SEO indicates that keywords will be optimized in descriptions in a user-friendly manner. So, anyone who’s using Amazon can readily find their desired products.

3) GDPR is Going to Impact SEO

If one thing has ruffled a lot of feathers in the SEO world, it is none other than the GDPR policy. The European Union regulation came into effect as per the date, May 2018. The policy ensures that customer data remains well-protected. In case, you don’t wish to violate the GDPR policy, you need to have a privacy & policy page on your website. Having such pages in place will do good to your website from the SEO perspective as well.

As we all know that Google Analytics collects user information from around the world, there is a high possibility that it will adjust to the modern day GDPR standards. As an SEO specialist, you can restrict some content from EU visitors and show them specific notifications on how they can access gated content. Why we believe GDPR restrictions hold greater viability for the SEO industry, it is because GDPR has imposed many restrictions on paid marketing.

4) Structured Data is Vital for SEO

Being an SEO specialist, if you have to learn one thing new this year, it should be to establish reliability on structured data wherever possible.

According to Marcus Tandler, co-founder and managing director of Ryte,

“With AI becoming increasingly important for Google, structured data is becoming more important as well,” Tandler said. “If Google wants to move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world, structured data is key. No matter how good your AI is, if it takes too long to ‘crawl’ the required information, it will never be great. AI requires fast processing of contents and their relations to each other.”

SEO specialists should start taking interest in structured data, schema, active and passive search behaviors. These behaviors can educate them how users can connect with their web products and further help them analyze the intent of customers incoming to their website.

Findability expert, JP Sherman of the Red Hat explained the phenomenon in much clearer words as,

“Contextual relationships between topics and behaviors, supported by structured markup, is the critical trend we need to start understanding, testing, and implementing for 2019,” Sherman said. “Using information architecture, tags, metadata and more recently, structured markup, we’ve had the ability to give search engines signals to understand this topical and supportive content structure.”

5) Increasing Authority and Trustworthiness

One other key trend among SEOs which is going to polish up on its charm next year is the establishment of authority and trustworthiness of a website. SEO specialists will make sure that they follow the E-A-T (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) as per the Google’s search quality rating guidelines.

These rating guidelines will reflect on Google’s initiative towards bringing credible content on search results first. When you will create future content on your website following the E-A-T principles, it will establish a sense of security and build trust among users. It will build a solid foundation for the customer to follow the rest of the customer’s journey.

Overall, these updates reflect Google’s initiative to provide more credible content in search results. Implementing E-A-T principles in your content won’t just help with rank, but it’ll secure more trust with users. This builds a solid foundation for the rest of the customer’s journey with your company.

Although these ratings are written for Google’s algorithm raters, it can help an SEO agency to understand where Google is heading towards on a short-term.

“I think this will help SEOs start to understand that ‘quality’ comes with context. You cannot rank so easily writing authoritative content unless you are already an authority on a given subject.” – Dixon Jones, founder of DHJ Ventures.

Wrapping it Up

So we have successfully scratched the surface here. And, I believe that’s just the very beginning of something new which is about to happen in the coming year. There is a multitude of surprises in the world of SEO which awaits us.

The old SEO trends are now dying. The new SEO trends are now evolving.

We will surely cover them all in the coming year. stay tuned and learn more from our blog.