My SEO Prediction for 2019:
Google will have less control over their algorithm leading to a decrease in volatility in rankings. We won’t see the single day fluctuations as we have in the past.
Backlinks will be less important and the content they are linked to will take higher priority as backlinks are easier to fake than truly well written content.
Schema and citations will rule local. Expect sites without schema that provide local services to be lost beyond visibility.
Google My Business will add more social functionality. Google+ may be dead, but long live GMB+
My takeaway:
You need to create compelling unique content in text, graphic, and video formats. Markup and code is extremely important leading to easier and faster to digest content, which will ultimately lead to higher ranking. The longer Google has to spend on your site the more it will “cost” of your budget. Since AI will be owning so much of the processing of data, you will need to make it consistent across all platforms (NAP) and also dead simple to pull the content out of your website. This means having closed captions on your video, clean fonts on your graphics (OCR), and content that is easy to pull from the source code.
What do you think?