If you have a website, then you probably have heard of SEO or Search Engine Optimization in 2019. What you may not know is that SEO strategy changes often and if you are still doing it the way you did a few years ago, you may actually be hurting your organic search engine results. We wanted to take a few minutes to tell you what we see changing with the search engines. When you understand how the search engines change, it helps you to adjust to those changes.
Genuine Content is the SEO King in 2019
What do we mean by genuine content? You cannot copy and paste content from someone else’s website and expect that content to help you in your organic search results. The artificial intelligence that control the algorithm is searching for what they call “duplicate content.” Even if you think you are being tricky, they are looking for the number or consecutive words or phrases in a document and they are not rewarding anyone for copying others.
The best investment you can make to your website on an ongoing basis is to develop new, fresh, and original content that your audience wants to interact with.
50% of all searches are 4 words or longer.
Over 5 billion Google searches are made every single day. Of those 5 billion searches it is interesting to know that 50% of those searches are 4 words or longer according to Hubspot. What changed? Voice search. If you are still developing your SEO strategy on single key words, stop. The average search is more than 5 words long. People are searching for “sushi near me” not simply “sushi.” With the introduction of so many voice activated search tools like Alexa, Siri, and Google, phrases are more likely to help you with your organic search results than simple keywords.
Don’t just guess what your SEO should be, research first.
Before you start writing a single sentence of your content research what people are searching for. Google has a great free tool you can use to research keywords and phrases called Google Trends. With Google Trends you can narrow down how many people have actually searched your keywords and phrases in real time. You can search regionally, nationally or internationally for your results.
Knowing what people are looking for now, will help you develop dynamic content that matters to your audience. There are a number of great articles on the topic of research including this one from Cardinal “The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2019“
NOTE: Great keyword tools that are free to use include:
https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/ Long time digital marketer Neil Patel can give you an overview of your website for free, see where your pages are ranking, explore the keywords identified with your site and more.
Learn about Header Tags to improve your SEO
The key to writing good content for your online blog or website is to use the tools available to you. Header tags tell AI to pay attention to the keywords and phrases in your text. By using header tags you are telling the search engines that this is the topic you are covering, and you want them to identify and categorize that content using the keywords and phrases you are highlighting.
You’re absolutely right, Elizabeth. I think the only way for SEO right now is to have genuine content. It’s all about providing the best content for the user. If you respect the reader and publish good content, Google will see that people find value on your website and will reward you with better ranking.
Thank you Mario. I tell my clients that they always have two choices, do the work or pay to be found. Sometimes a mix of both. Creating valuable content is still my best tool at boosting SEO and creating value added collateral to be shared on social media.
Yes, sometimes a mix of both is needed because people want results right away. Quality content is the best way to go for medium and long term strategies, but for immediate results, PPC will remain the way to go
Great article!!! This is such good information. I know (from you) how much SEO matters and making small changes can cause great results!!
Thanks Amanda, I hope you find it useful!