Now that the champagne and vacation days have worn off, it’s time to get back to work. If you want to stay ahead in today’s digital market, you must be aware of emerging SEO trends. As an SEO writer, you can incorporate strategies and ensure you are providing your clients with creative, reliable business advice. As a business owner, it’s important to stay informed of these industry trends as well. Start 2019 off right by staying one step ahead of your competition and incorporating the top 5 SEO trends for the new year.

EAT Your Way to Success

Just when you think it’s time to start dieting, you should actually start eating your way to the top. Establishing and growing your E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) in Google’s algorithm will be a hot trend in 2019. According to Google, E-A-T is one of the top 3 considerations for page quality. Let’s face it, you must eat in order to live. In the same manner, your website needs quality content writing in order to survive the world of digital marketing. Let’s delve a little farther into this trend so you can make sure you are what you eat.

• Expertise. You need to be an expert in your field whether you work solo or for a digital agency. Expertise shows the skills of the Main Content (MC) creator. The MC should also be mentioned in your content writing. Expertise is not as important for humor or gossip websites. However, it’s essential for medical, financial and legal websites. The most important thing to remember is that your site can show expertise as long as the content is truthful and useful to readers.
• Authoritativeness. You need to show that you are an authority in SEO marketing. This can come from the expertise of you or your writers. In other words, quality conversation drives authority. Not only are credentials necessary, but also personal experiences like reviews.
• Trustworthiness. Show users they can trust the creator of the main content and the website. Trustworthiness is vitally important for eCommerce websites asking users for credit card information. To get started, implement an SSL certificate on your site.

Amazon Search

Amazon’s search tool has an algorithm similar to Google’s but is used for searching within Amazon. More and more people go straight to Amazon to do shopping. The majority of online consumers visit Amazon first when they want to shop. Many will check with Amazon after finding something somewhere else. In other words, Amazon is becoming the Google of e-commerce. So if you are selling products and you’re not on Amazon, then you are missing a lot of potential customers. If you sell products such as books, music and electronics, you should optimize for Amazon in your SEO strategy.

On-page Optimization

On-page optimization, or on-page SEO, is all measures taken directly within your website to improve your position in the search rankings. For example, include measures to optimize your content or improve the meta description and title tags. As a content writer, you want to include material that answers user’s questions. Chatbots can lighten the load for common questions and procedural tasks. It is also important to ensure your internal site search provides relevant results.

Voice Search

Voice searches are being utilized more and more. This is one trend you’ll want to stay one step ahead of. FAQ pages are big drivers of voice search results. This is because users search in question form more with their voice than when typing. If you have an eCommerce or service business,  then it’s vital to consider what main questions will be asked of your industry. Use SEO marketing to develop content pages, blog posts and articles to answer these questions. You should also have a good idea about your customer base and what questions they may ask.

Write Exceptional Content

The recent updates to Google’s algorithm mean content writing is no longer enough to keep your blog alive. Google is increasing focus on content quality and the comprehensive content of your website. As a content writer, you need to create content that solves a problem. In other words, you need content that motivates and connects with people.

If you are looking for a digital agency to handle all of your SEO marketing needs, check out iwebcontent, your in-house, outsourced online marketing department.