How to prepare your website to rank on Google in 2019

Meanwhile, e-commerce companies that already have SEO strategies in place must also adapt to these changes if they want to remain relevant and dominate their respective markets. Making a mistake in the SEO field can cost you a lot of money.

That’s why it’s important to maintain a firm knowledge of the latest SEO trends for 2019, which will help you both in e-commerce and in other areas.

Let’s get to it!

Voice searches

Alexa, Siri and Cortana, today’s most popular virtual assistants, are quickly becoming an indispensable part of our daily experience , as we can now interact with them on our smartphones, in our cars and even in our homes.

We can take advantage of people’s use of these assistants by using innovative SEO strategies.

Start by working on question optimization .

What do I mean? Read carefully.

When you use voice search, most searches are in the form of questions , not disconnected phrases.

For example, instead of saying “rain umbrellas Madrid”, most users will search for “Where can I find a store that sells rain umbrellas in Madrid?”

It is therefore essential to structure your website content in such a way that it answers the questions of our potential customers , incorporating trigger words (e.g. how, what, best, etc.) and avoiding the direct introduction of keywords.

In a world dominated by voice search, one of the most important things will be to get a spot in Google’s featured snippet (also called position zero).

For Google, this snippet is the zero result, and it ranks it higher than any other search result for a query. To further optimize your content for featured snippets, remember to include the most relevant keywords in the page URL, title, and H1 tag.

When using voice search, people tend to ask a query in the way they speak in their everyday lives.

Google shows that approximately 70% of voice searches are done in natural language , as opposed to keywords that people typically type “robotically.”

Building a brand and achieving conversions

For a business-oriented online store owner, the importance of conversions outweighs ranking at virtually every turn. That’s because while a good Google ranking is great for attracting traffic, conversions are what bring the money into the house.

Consistently building reciprocal links has always been an essential aspect of any online store or eCommerce business’ SEO marketing arsenal, and it still is. The only difference is that moving forward, you will be focusing more on creating brand-building relationships with website owners and bloggers who are in your niche. Link building should be done not only for SEO purposes but also to get referral traffic , which increases overall website traffic.

Usability and user experience

Google has always emphasized the value of user experience (UX). The algorithm assigns priority in search results to websites that are fast, consistent, and simple to use . Research shows that websites with more than three seconds of loading time lose 40% of visitors .

Even if we take speed out as an important factor, and instead have a fast-loading website but with a confusing layout or complex UI, at the end of the day you will end up losing visitors. They will simply bounce without wasting their time.

This is why the readability of your website is so important. A good user experience, with simple content, prolongs the time a user spends on the website.

The focus should be on the user at all times. Therefore, it is crucial to provide a consistent and flawless user experience for both desktop and mobile devices . The number of searches on mobile devices has become significantly high and will surely continue to grow. Therefore, websites should be optimized for use on all devices.

Upgrade to WordPress 5.0

Personally, I am a fan of the WordPress platform and I can say with great confidence that there is a high probability that you have your site built on WordPress.

What’s more, the vast majority of the websites you see are already up to date, as it is one of the most popular content management systems in the world and in recent months it has had its biggest update in recent years.

WordPress 5.0 has been released and offers a “streamlined content publishing experience” for its users. With the new update also comes the new post editor called Gutenberg, which distributes a post or entry into multiple blocks for easier manipulation and editing.

You should be absolutely sure that all your plugins and themes are compatible with the latest WordPress 5 update .

While it is true that this new editor has caused quite a bit of controversy, it is important to keep WordPress updated to avoid security issues. If you don’t like the new editor, you just have to install the Classic Editor or No Gutenberg plugin and continue working with the editor as always but with your website updated to the latest version.

Keep your PHP version up to date

This point will require some assistance from your hosting company or webmaster. Please note that PHP 7.0 and all previous versions will no longer be supported this year.

According to the official php.net website: “Each version of PHP is fully supported for two years from its initial stable release. During this period, reported bugs and security issues are fixed and released in regular point releases.”