The time has come when we review and understand the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) trends this year. This analysis will help the marketers in understanding what is working right now in the SEO industry and what can be done in order to increase SEO traffic and revenue.
Below are 4 major updates in the SEO industry this year:
- Mobile-first indexing
- Quality content
- Page Speed and User Dwell Time
- Brand mentions as a major ranking signal (Backlinks)
Let’s discuss them one by one.
Mobile-First Indexing
This means that this year Google will be preferring your mobile site for crawling and indexing purposes. As user behavior is changing and shifting from desktop to mobile, it is extremely important for marketers to make their desktop website mobile friendly. This will help in faster indexing and crawling of your website.
You can check when was your website first crawled and indexed on Inspection Tool in Google Search Console. Here are some more useful resources to read this in detail:
Quality content
No matter how the trends follow up, creating quality content for your online property (website/blog) is more important than ever.
Google is rewarding the sites with higher rankings who regularly:
- Posts and shares quality content
- Create content by focusing on user intent and query
- Provide users a good experience on their website/app
This is what we at IPRO DEZIGN, a renowned web design and SEO agency in Singapore, suggests our clients:
- To create different types of content (videos/e-books/podcasts) instead of relying solely on text-based content
- Use infographics to explain your content data in an engaging way
- Also, create high-quality banner images, social media posts and e-mail marketing templates for your content distribution
- Use schema.org to create in-depth snippets as Google loves core details of the content
- Use more UI/UX elements to make your internet property (mobile app/website/blog) more attractive
- Make sure to optimize everything else it can hamper your page speed
Page Speed and User Dwell Time
Google is been focusing on page speed and user dwell time of your website for a long time. In fact, both are one of the major ranking factors in 2019. Let’s define both the terms for clarity:
- Page Speed: Page speed basically determines how long it takes your website to load in the browser. Generally, 3-sec is the best loading time and it worsens at 15 sec. Users generally close the website, when it takes too time to open. This results in a bad user intent response. You can use this tool to check the speed of your website.
- User Dwell Time: It depicts how much time a user is spending on your website. The longer the user stays on your website, the better it is for your rankings. To increase user dwell time, one should focus on creating good interlinking so the user can read about your content in-depth.
The last major update is:
Brand mentions as a major ranking signal
Brand mentions or simply backlink is a good metric used by search engines to measure the credibility of your website. But many people confuse between the quantity and quality of backlinks. Let’s sort this out:
50 quality backlinks are better than 1000 irrelevant backlinks. So one should focus on building quality backlinks.
Some useful resources on backlinks are:
- How to Get High Quality Backlinks in 2019 (7 New Strategies)
- What Matters More: Backlink Quality or Quantity?
IPRO DEZIGN PTE LTD
Singapore Web Design Agency
