It’s a new year, which brings new goals and a lot of reflec­tion. As 2019 kicks off, it’s time to con­sid­er your SEO goals — whether those are for you per­son­al­ly, as an SEO pro­fes­sion­al, or goals you have for projects.

We can learn a lot from each oth­er by hear­ing about our col­lec­tive goals as an SEO community.

There­fore, not only will you see some of my SEO goals for 2019 weaved into this arti­cle, you will also see a com­pi­la­tion of goals from SEO pro­fes­sion­als around the globe.

Strategic & Tactical SEO Goals for 2019

1. Pursue the Long-Tail

“Keep find­ing that sweet spot on the long tail. It’s so awe­some to be able to share your sto­ry, be found and dri­ve results. Going to the rel­e­vant mass but not where every­one is reward­ing,” said Christoph Trappe, Chief Con­tent Engage­ment Direc­tor at Sta­mats Communications.

2. Stay Ahead of New Technology & Its Impact on SEO

One of my major goals for 2019 is to immerse myself in the study of new tech­nolo­gies that will shape our future (includ­ing our dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing future).

For exam­ple, I plan to study and learn as much as I can about AI, vir­tu­al real­i­ty, and aug­ment­ed reality.

Kevin Chow, Direc­tor of SEO & Paid at Dig­i­tal Cur­rent, has a sim­i­lar take:

“A cou­ple of things I’m look­ing into is see­ing if AI for title tags, meta descrip­tions, and insights for report­ing is a direc­tion we should be mov­ing toward.”

3. Better Understand the Impact of Voice Search

Chow also aims to under­stand voice more than just Q&A with fea­tured snip­pets this year as he has “already been see­ing voice cross­ing over into PPC.”

Ita­mar Blauer, Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Exec­u­tive at Mint­Twist, thinks the same.

“2019 will be a big year for SEO. With the rise in vir­tu­al assis­tants and voice search, sus­tained knowl­edge is vital for suc­cess this year,” Blauer said.

4. Keep Up-to-Date with Trends & Algorithm Changes

Blauer also thinks that under­stand­ing trends and keep­ing updat­ed with the lat­est Google algo­rithms will pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for new ideas, great con­tent and even bet­ter results.

Tay­lor Kurtz, Own­er and Founder at Crush the Rank­ings, agreed.

“With the indus­try chang­ing almost by the minute, it’s imper­a­tive to not only iden­ti­fy upcom­ing trends, but how they impact your indus­try. It is also impor­tant to be ahead of the curve, such as opti­miz­ing for image search, as the new Google Pho­to app allows you to con­duct a search sim­ply based off of a pic­ture you take on your phone,” Kurtz said.

5. Monitor, Adapt & Pursue Featured Snippets

Michael Brown Jr., Senior SEO Man­ag­er at Jel­ly­fish Online Mar­ket­ing, feels strong­ly about opti­miz­ing for fea­tured snippets.

“Zero­ing in on 2019! As search real estate gets more and more dif­fi­cult to acquire and with the evo­lu­tion of mobile, mobile-first index­ing, and voice-assist­ed devices, it’s clear that rank­ings aren’t as impor­tant as they use to be. My goal for 2019 is to mon­i­tor, adapt, and pur­sue cur­rent and future fea­tured snip­pets as the oppor­tu­ni­ties arise,” he said.

“Get­ting ahead of the game by cre­at­ing best prac­tices for opti­miza­tions, stay­ing cur­rent with Google snip­pet tests for areas of future oppor­tu­ni­ty, and the most obvi­ous ‘defend­ing’ it once acquired. 2018 was filled with Google updates that focused on mod­i­fy­ing query intent toward infor­ma­tion­al sites,” Brown added.” My the­o­ry is that this is Google’s way of telling peo­ple that infor­ma­tion will be the dri­ver in SERPs, and that SEOs should divert their atten­tion to pro­vid­ing more use­ful infor­ma­tion so that it can be col­lect­ed and used direct­ly in zero posi­tion results.

“With the rise of data col­lec­tion devices such as Google Home there is going to be a sig­nif­i­cant rise in demand for direct answers via fea­tured snip­pets such as quick answer box­es. Things such as the talk per­tain­ing to FAQ, How To, and Q&A search fea­tures all sup­port the idea that this is a focus of Google and will only get even big­ger,” he said.

6. Improve Page Load Speed

Chris­t­ian Jones, Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at BestCompany.com, acknowl­edges the impor­tance of page load speed.

“One of our big goals this year is to improve the load­ing speed of all of our pages to less than 4 sec­onds. We plan to do so through image opti­miza­tion, min­i­miz­ing HTTP requests, and reduc­ing the num­ber of plu­g­ins and pix­els on our site,” Jones said.

7. Give Links Some Attention

Kurtz also thinks that agen­cies should con­duct more link audits than they do (i.e., once every 4–5 months).

Like­wise, Hazel Joy, Trav­el­blog­ger at Arrivals Hall, is look­ing to mon­i­tor links more.

“I run a trav­el blog and 2019 will be the year of the link for me. I’ll be focus­ing more on fix­ing out­bound bro­ken links and get­ting back­links,” Joy said.

8. Tie SEO with CRO

Jim Knapp, Own­er of JK Strate­gies, points out the need to make SEO and con­ver­sion rate opti­miza­tion (CRO) work together.

“Work­ing with a whole bunch of small busi­ness­es over the years, it seems like SEO with­out CRO is like invit­ing a bunch of peo­ple to a par­ty — with a high num­ber of RSVPs — then pro­vid­ing noth­ing for them to do once they get there,” Knapp said.

Professional SEO Goals for 2019

9. Focus on Personal Branding

Mean­while, Bill Hartzer, SEO & Domain Name Con­sul­tant at Hartzer Con­sult­ing, wants to work on his per­son­al brand in 2019. As he puts it:

“While dig­i­tal mar­keters are work­ing for their agency, and work­ing on their careers, it’s impor­tant to not for­get about your own per­son­al brand. I’ve seen the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try change a lot over the past 15 years, and hav­ing a strong per­son­al brand will allow you to always come out on top when the indus­try changes. To build your per­son­al brand, make sure that your own social media accounts are active and the best they can be. Work on writ­ing, speak­ing, and net­work­ing. Cre­ate your own per­son­al web­site on your own domain name.”

10. Get More Organized

This year, Hartzer also wants to get more organized.

“Run­ning my own busi­ness, I am orga­nized — but there’s always some­thing that I can work on, whether it’s mak­ing sure my task lists are up to date or list of goals for the day, week, and year are up to date,” he said.

11. Make Clients Happy

Kurtz also con­sid­ers mak­ing the cus­tomer hap­py as a top goal.

Daria Khmel­nit­skaya, SEO Spe­cial­ist at SE Rank­ing, thinks it’s a good idea to con­nect your own pro­fes­sion­al goals with the goals of your cur­rent project or business.

“In this case you’ll get addi­tion­al help from your col­leagues and man­age­ment. And every year’s goal of SEO spe­cial­ist is – get­ting more mis­takes and learn­ing from them in order to get more expe­ri­ence,” Khmel­nit­skaya said.

12. Tell a Better Story

This goal applies in mul­ti­ple areas.

I want to tell a bet­ter sto­ry of how SEO is help­ing a client. Met­rics are nec­es­sary, but sim­ply report­ing num­bers is not enough. I want to get bet­ter at show­ing how SEO has improved a busi­ness by reach­ing their KPIs and meet­ing their busi­ness objectives.
As a speak­er and teacher, I want to improve my abil­i­ty to tell a sto­ry that has a deep­er mes­sage and leads to learning.
Reflect on Your 2019 Goals
Now is the time to set your goals and deter­mine how you will improve as an SEO professional.

Hope­ful­ly read­ing 2019 goals from the SEO com­mu­ni­ty spurs some new goals for you as we start this new year!

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