SEO is no longer about keywords placement and backlinks. What dominates the industry and guarantees SEO success for your business today may fall out of favor within a matter of just months. SEO is constantly changing as a result of constant changes in search engine algorithms. Search engines are always looking for more data about your business to provide more timely, personalized and accurate search results as a great approach to enhance user experience. Additionally, technology has also evolved over the years to help SEO keep up with the SEO pace with the most recent development being the SEO competitor rank tracker. If you have been struggling with SEO or you are new in the industry it is high time you equip yourself with the right tools and know what SEO trends to expect in 2018 to compete effectively in the digital market.
Whether you are a webmaster or an SEO consultancy, you need to prepare adequately for possible SEO trends in 2018 to ensure business success in the online arena. As an SEO professional, your SEO tasks involves more than just backlinks and keywords but of course with more, high-tech SEO research tools to make the workflow seamless and simple. The main goal of SEO has shifted to enhancing a smooth user experience by delivering the right accurate information in a timely manner. Here we have developed and list of top nine SEO trends to look out for in 2018 which will shape your modern SEO campaigns.
Top Nine 2018 SEO Trends
- Mobile-first Indexing – Google has rolled out the mobile-first indexing which means that it will index and rank your mobile site version first. Websites that are mobile optimized will thus rank higher than desktop optimized search. To prepare for this, you need to ensure that your site is mobile friendly and follows a responsive design when developing your site. You can use the following checklist to determine your preparedness:
- Content on your mobile version is equivalent to content indexed for your desktop version.
- Use of similar internal links for your desktop and mobile version.
- Ensure that images and ALT texts are available – Current images can be indexed for image search.
- Presence of structured data and annotations such as AMP and hreflang.
- Dominance Of Voice Search – About 25% of searches come from voice queries which have been enabled by smart tools like the Amazon Echo, Google Home and many others expected to hit the market. With use of voice search on the rise, it is time for SEO experts to optimize your search engine marketing campaigns for voice queries. A great way to prepare for this is to focus more on long-tail keywords and use of syntax that is similar to modern conversational language. Developed highly structured content that is aimed to answer specific user questions will also be profitable.
- Focus on User Experience – We must change our approach and attitude towards SEO. The main goal of SEO should be to address user demands and expectations. This is a combination of several aspects which includes device friendliness, loading speed, website usability. Ensure that your web pages are well structured and easy to navigate to ensure that user can easily get what they are looking for instantly. Perform a thorough keyword research to create content based on what your potential customers are looking for. It is no longer about ranking at the top of SERP but providing what your customers are in need of. This will not only earn you traffic but quality traffic.
- Optimized Intent – Search results have become more contextual and timely. It will help to figure out the intent behind your target keywords and optimize your content for the intent driving the search. Avoid generic optimization and focus more on intent-focused optimization.
- Featured Snippets – Find keyword phrases that results with featured snippets and develop content to answer the user questions.
- Use of SERP Features – With evolution in technology, it will help to use the available advanced SERP features to track your SEO rankings, monitor your ranking trends and analyse the reports to improve your strategy. Some features offer smart services like the suggestion of necessary adjustments in your campaign.
- Content Marketing – Content is king. Ensure development of quality and relevant content using a balanced keyword density and optimize your content for user demands. You can use keyword mapping tactics to determine the need for new content.
- Link Building – Track your brand mentions and optimize your SEO for quality backlinks. Aim to earn high authoritative mentions and also utilize the potential of major social media networks to increase your brand prominence.
- Use Of Visual Content – Video content is likely to win you more traffic than other forms of contents. Modern web users find it easy and time conserving to digest and share video content than the reading boring paragraphs of content. To utilize the opportunity you need to create informative and relevant video content and increase your audience base as well as earn a huge online followership.
Get the right tools and brace yourself for a fruitful SEO campaign in 2018.