What are the biggest changes we can see in 2019 in SEO?

Google's machine learning-based algorithm is seemingly matured and efficiently functional at the moment. This is one clear indication that the world of SEO in 2019 will see a significant change in what ranking factors are more important over others and how search engines understand users' (and website contents') intent.

(Courtesy: Brainpulse)

To put it more clearly, here are three of the biggest changes we can/will see in 2019 in SEO:

· Backlinks will become less relevant

I might receive a lot of flak for this but it's true. For decades, backlinks remained the most important ranking factor. Only a couple of years back did content managed to match its relevancy, and that was also the time content marketing dashed into the mainstream.

Even till this day, with all the measures in action from search engines, link building remains dominated with spammy/black-hat practices. And in recent times, Google (and even Bing) has been more obsessed than ever to sweep away such black-hat SEO practices. So, it's almost imminent that as we move forward and search engines become more user-centric, the relevancy of backlinks would decline.

· The rise of interactive, visually appealing contents

From the SEO perspective, one would write contents to drive conversion. However, today, with UX-driven factors becoming more important -- dwell time, bounce rate, CTR and pogo-sticking -- the focus of creating contents has shifted to engagement.

The article must be engaging enough to hook the reader to an extent that they spend more time on the page and go to other webpages on the site.

This shift in trend is slowly bringing interactive contents in the limelight; like quizzes, animated infographic, and more.

Also read: What are SEO trends that to be followed in 2019?

(Courtesy: Singlegrain)

· Brand, and brand everywhere

It's assumed that reputed and popular brands usually offer 'good quality' products/contents. And since search engines strive to offer users nothing but the best quality result, they rank brands much higher comparatively.

In fact, in recent times, Google has been more blatant its preference for brands. Google any phrase right away; for example "cricket news". And you will find the result of brands/companies that you already know about. There won't be any unknown name on at least the first couple of pages.

So, SEO in 2019 will be more centric to brands. Those companies who will prioritize their brand name in their optimization and content strategies the most, they will be rewarded the most.

Of course, there are few other changes that will take over the SEO scene this year.

For example, LSI keywords will get more attention, long-form contents will get longer, SEO would become more about "create as many high-quality contents as possible", voice search will grow more popular which will take away the limelight from keywords to more focus on users' intent.

And oh, yes, technical SEO would become less relevant.

These are ways how SEO in 2019 will change.

To adapt to these changing trends, in-depth seo learning

is an edge. Here are seo courses online that you may want consider checking out.

Good luck! :)