I’ve been monitoring trends in SEO for many years. There’s consistently been 3 core things that have been shown to be most important year after year.
These 3 are:
- The ability for a site to produce content as often as possible.
- The ability for a site and person/s to produce high quality content.
- Focus on sharing the content on social media and emails to get shares, follows and backlinks.
If any website follows these 3 things, not only will they see massive expansion, rankings and traffic in 2019, but I would absolutely bet them good money that they will also see the same trends and success next year too.
Let me isolate and break down each of these things and explain what you need to do this year so each one of them be maximized and see the best results from:
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Trend #1: The ability for a site to produce content as often as it can.
If you look at this particular one and see how it’s evolved, you will see that year after year, the quota for content on a site has grown.
Let’s take websites in 2005 as a starting point:
You could very easily have made 1 page websites at the time, and ranked them on Google back then, and quickly. I certainly did this and even abused it (there was nothing illegal going on, it’s just how the ranking game worked back then).
If you knew how to rank sites back then, trust me, you could have made a lot of money, quite easily with SEO. And I certainly did that in my case.
But then let’s jump 1, 2, 5, 10 and even 14 years to 2019. What changed?
Well to rank a single page website for competitive keywords is nearly impossible now.
Only a site that has at least 30, 50 or even a 100 pages on it will do well today. Now notice how that trend that evolved:
SEO now requires FAR more work (content production) for a high ranking website.
This is one of the reasons why there has been a huge market growth and demand for freelance writers, because site owners who wish to get great rankings, need help for others to produce content for them so they can rank higher.
And that costs money, a lot sometimes.
Now this may have you wonder if today, in 2019, can a single person (with a small or no budget) make a large website and produce a lot of content all by themselves?
The answer is yes, but if you do not follow the 5 tips I’m going to give you, then you are likely not going to get anywhere with SEO, this year or any year:
Trend #2: Producing content is good, but it’s the quality of it that truly determines SEO success.
Let me ask you this…
If I were to tell you that 2 bloggers created websites on the same topic, and one had 30 blog posts, and the other a 100, but the person with the 30 was able to get more rankings, more traffic and more success from SEO.
You would probably wonder how that’s possible. After all, we did just look at the first trend and I did clearly state that content production is one of the MAIN ones to focus on.
Yet this one kind of contradicts it no? Well not quite.
Content production and quality goes hand and hand when it comes to rankings and if you look at how this has developed over the years, you will find that there is also a correlation going on…
Again, let’s look back at 2005 (And I am using that year because that’s when I began):
The same people who knew that 1 page websites were enough to rank high were able to make these same sites in hours if not minutes. And with only a few 100 words, they typically didn’t need to do much to get results.
Now the correlation you found during this time, was that people who produced content in mass amounts, also produced low quality content. You commonly found people abusing this easy way of doing SEO and selling their products, spamming people with cheap tactics and doing stuff that basically lowered the confidence of the reader (and search engine trust).
As the trend of writing more content to get better rankings rose, so did the need to improve the quality of it. Now quality can be interpreted subjectively by people, but the best way for me to describe it is…
Usually honesty on the part of the blogger who is writing mixed with good feedback from the reader is what determines the level of quality of content…
And it’s the blogger who creates more of this on their site that gets better feedback from Google, readers and thus rankings. Trust me, you will know a good blog when you land on it. You’ll see tons of comments, tons of likes, all of that and guess what? It’s all a sign of good, and great quality stuff.
This is why the person with the lesser content on their blog can outrank the one who has more of it. Now just as I did before, allow me to offer you 5 tips to maximize your success with this VERY important trend:
Social media does have an important role to play with SEO trends.
Stuff gets shared today more than ever before, so naturally if you do things like create great content and make it easily “sharable” on the main social media networks, you are likely to get people sharing it and thus driving more people to your site in the process. More on that here.
Now there is another side to this trend and that is that as important as social media is to your site, it’s truly secondary in my experience to the first 2 things. Unless you are some sort of celebrity and have great status online or followers, you will likely have to work a lot, build up your site and then engage in social media to get success from it.
Most unknown people and that would be just about 99% of people who do SEO, make a huge mistake when starting out on trying to market their site on social media TOO much, to people who frankly don’t care or know about them.
The way to truly make this trend work best for you is to create a following from the incoming visitors to your site through SEO and then build a following from those visitors to then share your content with. That is how it’s supposed to be done.
You may notice that I have a Facebook fan page on this site (look to the right). I’m slowly building my following up this exact same way I’m talking about in this trend, but you will also notice that I don’t really care so much about this, because again, I have to tell you that focusing on trends 1 and 2 is where you will truly see success.
Think about it…
If you focus on the first 2 things above, and get to say 100 visitors a day, you can get 3,000 of them a month. Then by providing a way for those 3,000 visitors to follow you on various social media networks, you can stay in touch with them.
Suppose 10% of these 3,000 people (300) start following you on 2-3 networks. You can then share your content with them there and get them to like and share it. They may also email others about it and share it on their social networks, providing you with decent backlinks to your site.
Now consider the growth you can experience if you keep growing this following month after month. From 300 followers in month 1, you can keep getting more and more and get 1,000’s by the year’s end. Imagine the reach you’d have then through social media. It would be a lot.
But once again, this can be accomplished by getting to that point through the first 2 trends and then doing social media networking, not the other way around.
One of the ways I’ve made this work very well for me was that on another site I own, I refer people into a network where I teach them these same things I’m talking about here and over the years, my subscriber base has risen to over 30,000 followers (it’s not on any major social media channel, but it doesn’t matter, because these followers are pretty active for me):
This is how SEO evolves and it’s how it will continue to evolve.
Year after year, these 3 have been the ones that have stayed consistent in terms of how important they are and they have only grown. I am 100% certain that in 2019 these 3 things will and should be the main focus for any blogger and SEO person.
And I am also 100% sure that if you focus on these 3 things correctly, that your blog and site will success way beyond 2019. In fact, when people try to tell me that SEO is dead, they just don’t understand the trends surrounding it, but it’s because I do (and shared them here with you) that my sites can and do grow.
And just to erase any doubt on whether what I’m saying here is theory, let me tell you that since 2005, I’ve made numerous sites that have gotten great rankings (my background in this), by following the same exact tips listed above for each trend. This is what I’ll be doing moving forward in 2019 and you should be too.
I recently took an SEO course that also mentioned some of the trends that you talk about here. I am starting to have some success with ranking a bit more in Google. The SEO course I took mentioned that 1,500 words should be the absolute minimum, with 2000 words being a lot better. Just wondering what your thoughts are about this?
Also, I tend to use a lot of images and screen shots. I know it’s good to use images, but can too many slow a site down, which would then hurt rankings? Have you heard of that happening?
I do write content almost daily, but you’re starting to make me nervous that I’ll never get ahead! Then again, I’m not really trying to compete against those big sites. Just doing my thing with my long-tailed keyword and review posts.
Hi Christina, here is what I think:
1) I wouldn’t say that 1,500 words is the “bare minimum”. I would certainly aim for that, but anything over a 1,000 words of great content targeting a low competition keyword is fine. Also frequently blogging is a must.
2) Images can slow down a site if they are very large or take too much time to load (that depends on your hosting) and that can slow down the loading of the page and interfere with the reading experience users have. This CAN have an impact on rankings, but generally this is not the case if the images aren’t too larg.
3) The other issue about images is how you use them with your content. I generally don’t use images very often in my content, but I find it’s a balance where too few images can make reading too much content boring and having too many images may distract readers from actually reading it.
In my experience the ideal solution is to use images to back up the points you make in your content or if you try to clarify something complex in text, use an image afterwards to make that explanation easier, the goal is to help readers understand and appreciate the content you write better.
You should have Google analytics installed on your site so you can see how people are viewing your pages and if they are staying long on the page (a few minutes is great), then it means you’re doing fine.
4) Now about your site not doing too well, you did mention your site is starting to get traffic. Has it been at least months? I recommend checking out my article on the Google Sandbox, which if true, would mean the best times for your site are ahead. I would keep blogging frequently and this should definitely help.
Thanks for all of your answers. I’ve been working diligently on my site (posting articles about 5 times per week) for 5 months.
It’s going OK. I actually feel like my traffic is starting to get better. But you know how it goes, it’s never enough! 🙂
I did read your article about Google Sandbox some time ago, and that was helpful. (I’ll read it again for a refresher.) I’m crossing my fingers now that I’m in the 6th month that I’ll start getting let in more and more.
If the traffic is already picking up after being dead for a few months, then it’s a sign you’re stepping out of that sandbox. I am certain you will be seeing a massive growth within the next few months, not just for the content you’ve been posting since the beginning, but the new content you are posting now. It will only help.
That’s exciting to hear! Thanks so much for your advice. I appreciate it!
No problem!
Hi Vitaliy, I’m sort of a newbie at this and I really find your article interesting. I’m wondering why a post should have to be 1,500 words? It seems to be a lot to me, but maybe its just because I’m just starting out? Is that a magic number that Google is looking for that they consider necessary to make a good post or is there some other reason for that number?
Thanks for your input.
David hi, 1,500 words isn’t really a “secret” number and it’s not something that Google looks at, but it’s a safe quota in my experience to aim for. Sites that have text and rank high on Google generally have at least that many words on their pages.
Typically more content on a page helps with rankings and the more of it you write, the more chances there are that people will read it (interlink as well, that helps), which will help them stay on the site. Of course, it doesn’t matter if you have that much content, if it’s not interesting to read, so rather than focus on that number, focus on making the readability of that content worth it.
Hi Vitally.
I really enjoyed this great article that cuts to the chase and explains SEO trends in simple terms we can all understand. It’s about consistently posting quality content. I’ve found that long-form content of 1500 plus words generally fares best and I’ve seen better success with rankings as the length of my blog posts has grown. But I think the single biggest determinant of search engine success is website maturity. Would you agree? Blogging is not for folks who lack patience or the persistence to keep publishing. Thanks for the great info!
Hi Linda, website maturity deals a lot with Google’s sandbox meaning that the more your site matures, the more it steps out of the sandbox. But in reality, I’d say quality content posting is even more important, because any person can start up a site and wait for it to mature, while doing nothing on it.
But it’s really the work the individual puts into the site that counts for rankings. The other factors work alongside that.
Great article Vitaliy. Being an SEO guy myself I completely understand all of this to be true and effective in content marketing and ranking your site. This is great information everyone should read to help them with their SEO and rankings.
I would even go as far as creating 2,000+ word high quality articles and avoid keyword stuffing or spammy links in your content.
I noticed that the Blog page does not have any content showing. Don’t know why but its something you might want to check out. You could add the comments widget to your sidebar to make your articles available for your readers too.
All other navigation on your site works well. Wish all the best in 2019 and beyond.
Aloha,
Reinaldo
Hi Reinaldo, currently, my homepage is my blog page and for now, it’ll remain this way, so my official “blog page” is blank until the site grows further, after which, I’ll have a more official home page and the blogs will be listed on the blog page.
I was super happy to read your top three tips and see that I am currently doing exactly what you suggested. I don’t write a post a day, but I do try to write a post every other day on each of my sites. I currently have two that I am running, and I am pretty sure that is all that I will be running unless I outsource like you were talking about.
I do it all myself, and I have to say your suggestion to do it on something you have passion for is spot on because not only do you know about the subject, but you can enjoy being so immersed in the subject matter.
Great article, and I am making 2019 my year for success. I’m going to keep writing quality content and enjoying the journey. Thanks so much.
Hi Babs, I have an interesting suggestion that may help speed up that 2019 goal and that is to focus most of your energy on one of the two sites you have, and of course, you can probably guess, the top pick should be the one you love more.
And instead of writing a post every other day on that site, try to make it daily, and with the remaining time, write content once every few days on the other. We’re all limited on time in this business, so focusing on the project which you love most and the one which has the most potential would be the best move I’d recommend in this case.
Thank you for providing this valuable tips. I am planning on creating my first blog and I am learning intensively about SEO and how to apply it to get the best results for my website. What surprised me the most is the thing you said about quality being over quantity. I though that you should create a lot of content and by nature you will attract more visitors. But obviously, this is not the case.
Many authors says that Google changes the way it positions posts and that it was much easier reaching page one back in 2010 then it is now.
Thank you for sharing this trends once again. I am going to bookmark your website because you are covering really great topics.
Strahinja.
Hi Strahinja, there’s nothing bad about producing a lot of content and you should be doing that, but the quality of it needs to be an even more important priority. This is because people appreciate and give much better feedback on quality content. Usually those who rush to produce content faster end up making it look worse.
And as for rankings, any person can still rank their website high, there’s just a lot more obstacles in the way now and producing higher quality content actually overcomes MOST of those obstacles.
Can you talk a little more about the frequency of a website posting content? I’ve read several conflicting points of views on this topic and most of the actual research I’ve seen shows that Google doesn’t take into account the frequency of posting to rank articles or a site.
On the other hand posting on a more frequent basis definitely gives you more chances to get an article to rank.
Given this, every new post is another chance at a page one article so it absolutely makes sense to keep posting either way…but have you actually noticed frequency impacting the ranking of other articles that have say been posted for weeks or months?
Hi Craig, posting more and getting Google to crawl that new content absolutely helps and they do take that into account. I even spoke with another SEO expert on this just today and he also confirmed it.
I think that the people who claim that posting frequency doesn’t affect ranking may not have seen their site pass the sandbox period, and it’s during the first few months that a new site has to pass through it, that no matter how often you post content, it won’t impact rating, but the truth is, it will and that will only start happening once the site is out of the sandbox.
And in my experiences, improved posting frequency led to a very positive increase in traffic, impressions and rankings.
Hi Vitaliy, thank you for sharing these tips for greater success. I myself have proven numbers 1 and 2 to be true.
When I was just starting with my website, I was publishing no less than 1,000 to 1,500-word articles every 5 days and after barely 3 months I started to see a considerable amounts of traffic.
I maintained this publishing frequency for about a year. After which I tried to increase it to 3 times a week but with shorter posts, which means low quality. It did not take long for my traffic to slowly fade away.
In 2019, I am determined to produce and publish high quality content and also share them on social media more often. Thanks again!
Alice hi, shorter posts do not always mean lesser quality, and I believe the reason these posts didn’t get higher rankings was because you were possibly trying to target more competitive keywords, whilst your site was not in a very high authority stage.
You did mention publishing basically once a week which meant after 3 months, you probably had a dozen or so articles. If you saw traffic after 3 months, it means you exited the sandbox very early (which is great), but that does not mean every future post you would produce would automatically hit the first page, that still requires a lot more work and time.
I know shorter posts can rank high too, but that is very dependent on the foundation of the site’s authority, which I would recommend continuing to grow. Those shorter posts can still rank high in the future, so don’t give up.
Vitaliy, this advice is amazing! It’s not everyday you are offered such wisdom, absolutely free.
I’m fairly new to SEO but have heard that content is king. What I wasn’t sure of was how much I should be focusing on driving traffic to my website by using social media, at least in the beginning. What I learned here from yourself is that you first need to build up your website content and get an active following that way.
Once you have that following you can then have some percentage of those individuals interact with you on social media. It’s actually these types of “social proof” shares and likes that will have the most impact and drive more buzz and traffic to your site. This is because you’ve grown the social media following organically by creating great website content first.
Truly a great picture you’ve painted and one I’m very grateful for! Aside from this article, what is your top recommended reading or training on the subject of SEO?
Thanks so much Vitaliy!
All the best,
Kevin
Kevin, thanks so much! You understood my main message about social media perfectly. Regarding reading and training recommendations, check out my about me page, where I talk about a program that I learned SEO from.
I totally echo with what you said about quality content and the number of words. Most of my earlier blogs do not rank because I was just rushing through and didn’t give much thought about offering relevant information. When I really dive into the research part, coming up with 1,500 words (or more) is totally possible.
The part I am struggling with is to produce content as frequently as possible, especially in finding digital products to review. In the make money online niche, I heard that product reviews get the most traffic to affiliate sites. I was wondering if you can share some tips in this area based on your experience. Thanks.
Cathy hi, as someone who runs his own affiliate site on the side and in the same niche, I can tell you that for the most part, you are right on the product reviews assessment.
One tip I can offer is to look at gigantic blog sites which are also in the same niche and see what they are reviewing and to then use those ideas to write your own reviews.
This will absolutely help you produce your content at a faster pace, but remember, don’t neglect the quality. If you can only produce 2 really high quality posts a week, that’s better than producing 7, that are low quality but put out quickly.
These is great info about SEO trends, and it is obvious that we all need to follow your advice if we are to be successful.
I really liked your 10 SEO tips to help in building and establishing your website. I have noted to myself which ones I need to work harder with, and I shall be doing my best to do just that.
It is obvious from what you say that consistency is what is needed, would you agree? It is really good to have all this good advice in the same place that’s easy to access. Thank you so much for your invaluable info.
Chrissie
Consistency is very important in SEO Chrissie, but it’s more than that. It’s also about being smart how you target your keywords, and how you write your content, and to stay consistent with THAT particular way of doing things, as this will maximize your site’s SEO growth.
Thanks so much for these expert tips. My website is three months old and I have been focusing on the quality of my content while also ensuring I reach over 3000 words plus blogging regularly. It takes a lot of dedication and focus so reading your article has helped me to stay focused and not feel dismayed. Following your expert seo tips I am sure to succeed!
Wow, that’s an amazing quota you’re setting Dianne and considering that you are also utilizing the 10 SEO tips I gave, I am certain you are going to have amazing traffic coming to your page within the next several months and on.