Whether you’re a digital marketer or the owner of a brand, a sound understanding of changes and projected trends are paramount to crafting and launching strategic digital marketing campaigns.
As search engine algorithms evolve, voice search plays a more prominent role. Machine learning technology sees increased implementation in various industries, which is going to be the key to gaining and maintaining your brand’s competitive edge in 2019.
In 2019, we expect to see a lot of changes to Google, and in 2020 there is a planned core Google algorithm update, this a an SEO trend that has been consistent for many years with Google: Core algorithm updates. This affects businesses and in the past has destroyed businesses overnight who didn’t adhere to Google best practice policy.
Predicting the next 10 years of SEO is even more difficult but with machine learning booming, reduced need to click-thru to websites and more, is it time to stop rely solely on Google?
Here are some important concepts to take in that will affect your digital marketing journey this year.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) Still Proves Its Worth
Currently, display advertising is still effective at driving traffic to websites. How effective? A “300% increase” kind of effective. As one of the top three methods for on-page conversions, it’s not surprising that search ads currently comprise 39% of total advertising online.
Adapt SEO to Natural Language processing and Voice Search
With integrations on mobile and other devices, the use of voice search to find information online is increasing exponentially.
A study conducted by tracking and analytics firm Invoca reveals that 20% of searches were conducted via voice in 2017, and that figure is projected to rise by 50% in 2020. In fact, Global Web Index estimated that 325.8 million peopled used voice control software in just one month!
Considering the statistics gathered on voice assistant users, the numbers make sense:
What this means is that it’s essential for you to adapt and tailor your SEO strategy to include more long-tail keywords that best mimic user intent in queries that are spoken aloud.
Video Continues To Be Successful
YouTube is now second only to Facebook in terms of monthly active users. Even on LinkedIn, video has been found to be shared 20 times more than other types of content, and overall, 87% of people profess a preference to video content in 2019.
Market for Mobile
With mobile-first indexing, it’s time to focus on making your website and marketing strategies more mobile-friendly.
Optimize Loading Speed for Different Devices
Content quality and page speed are still of high importance. In case you missed it though, Google has rolled out a mobile speed score algorithm and is implementing its use in determining ranks.
As you can see from the infographic below, how fast a web page loads significantly impacts conversion rates.
Source: Monitor Backlinks
Keep An Eye on AI
Through machine learning, AI is now used in a variety of ways in digital marketing. Its use includes content generation, content curation, and audience targeting, among other things.
Quill, Grid, Facebook Ads for Facebook users, Google Ads, and Einstein for Salesforce are some great examples you can consider giving a try if you haven’t yet looked into how AI can support your marketing strategies.
Coupled with the concepts covered above, keen insights on upcoming digital marketing trends for this year should help you hammer out a winning marketing plan.
You’re in luck. Set yourself up for success with this infographic on 2019 digital marketing trends, courtesy of SERPwatch.
