Having a digital presence for any business is a must in 2019. Staying in-tune with the ever evolving digital marketing world is a must for marketers. Google makes this challenge for small businesses with the number of changes they make to their algorithm each year and it only increases the importance of digital marketing. In 2019, we’ve already seen two major core updates in March and June. Keeping up with the latest trends and best practices will businesses and marketers stay on top of their industry. 
There are a lot of resources to help achieve your digital success. We reached out to the top digital marketing experts to hear from them and what they thought would matter in SEO for 2019.
Write For Your Audience
“Google is interested in what people are interested in, and people love clear and intriguing writing,” describes Chris Gillespie of Find A Way Media. “The smartest thing any company can do for their rankings is write things people actually stay to read.”
Machine Learning Software
“The strongest trend we are seeing for the first time is effective machine learning/AI automation,” explains Rick Maggio of Learn Digital Advertising. “Its been talked about (and bragged about) for a long time from the big ad networks but quite honestly, its not until 2019 that we consistently see automation in ad networks outperform non-automated “human driven” campaigns. Thus, the role of marketers seems to shift from a creative one toward a more technical role of implementing robust analytics and data-driven optimization.”
“With advancing technology in artificial intelligence, 2019 has already seen that some A.I based marketing software could easily steal a low level marketers job,” notes Chris Kinney of TurnkeyWebsiteHub. “What i mean is AI generated content. There will always be old school bloggers that research and write but moving into the future I can see over 45% of content being put out will be created by A.I.”
“The digital marketing trend is shifting more towards the involvement of AI and machine learning for acquiring the desired campaign results,” explains Tuhin Banik of ThatWare. “In the field of SEO, AI-based solutions such as semantic search engineering, NLP, correlation, information retrieval mechanism and etc are being used thoroughly for ranking websites. Similarly, in the field of social and analytics; machine learning solutions such as data-driven market research, holistic insights, and etc are being used. Furthermore, digital marketing as a whole is getting more shifted towards automation. With that being said, marketing automation is really prevailing a lot into the industry.”
“Digital marketing is one of the fastest-growing segments of todays marketplace. With rapid growth comes innovation and many new digital marketing trends and strategies are evolving in Internet-connected, high-tech era in which we all live,” notes John Lohr of CentraTech Solutions. “We see Artificial Intelligence (AI) as playing a significant role in most of the new trends for 2019 and beyond. Naural Language Processing can be used to analyze consumer behaviors and search patterns and help businesses understand how customers find their products and services. AI can also be used in programmatic advertising to automate purchasing digital ads, allowing businesses to target more specific audiences. Chatbots and visual search will also continue to be important parts of digital marketing in 2019 and these AI-based technologies will become increasingly more important in the future.”
E-Commerce Experience
“For local businesses, especially retailers, service providers and restaurants, offering an e-commerce experience is becoming critical to success,” echoes Terence Channon of TechOps. “Customers are expecting this convenience and will choose to engage with businesses that offer this convenience. It has become a primary consideration for customers vs. quality or exact-fit. If you dont have ways for customers to transact with you online (buy online, pick up in store; online food ordering; online bill pay), the customer will go elsewhere.”
Innovate, Innovate, Innovate
“Strategies that work today, may not work tomorrow,” describes Ryan Mitchell of Fabric Digital. “And strategies that you thought would never work may work next week. It is an ever changing landscape and you need to keep on testing and validating new ideas.”
“Expertise, Authority, and Trust should be your SEO mandate in 2019!,” adds Tony Zeoli of Digital Strategy Works.
“To stay ahead of the competition in Local Search, businesses are going to need to keep on top of the ever-changing trends including local voice search,” explains Dante Crescenzi of Review Rocket. “75% of people who own smart speakers use them to search for local businesses on a weekly basis.”