Top SEO Trends 2018

It is  hard to believe that there is any SEO tactics which would have been left in 2017.

How effective were the SEO strategies and initiatives? Were they significant or worse than the expected?

Similar to other areas in the IT industry, SEO is constantly changing. The once fail-proof method of consistently landing on a top SERPs (search engine results pages) became irrelevant within a few months. SEO practices that once dominated the industry quickly fell out of favor within short period of time due to hard google algorithms.

The Google algorithm itself changes constantly, sometimes with multiple changes happening within months. On top of that, the technology available to SEO professionals also constantly evolves, allowing us to stay abreast the seemingly daily changes of what it takes to dominate search.

Whether you want to continue with 2017 and start a new or you want to build on the success of your 2017 SEO campaigns, Here are some SEO trends to be to be followed in 2018:  

SEO trends 2018

Increased Search Engine Results Page Features

It is the goal of any SEO professional to achieve and maintain a high volume of organic traffic to a given website or webpage. Generally, this would be the result of reaching the top spot on a search engine results page. Not only is it important to achieve this position, but to also maintain same position as long as possible.

However, with the latest developments in the search engines, achieving this #1 ranking may no longer be enough to get the traffic you desire.

Gone are the days of the ten search results listings, highlighted in blue hypertext, and a couple of clearly marked ads. Now, when you look at a SERP, it is cluttered with images, videos, links, social media mentions, in-depth article listings, various widgets, and ads. It has become easy for a #1 result to get lost in the busy jumble of other page features.

While keyword and key phrase optimization are still important, you now have other offsite elements to consider.

Popular search engine results page features include AdWords, news block, featured snippets, local packs, reviews, tweets, video, image pack, shopping results and site links.

How can you rank and monitor your rankings for all of these? There are tools such as Rank Tracker that allow you to track your ranking and to show you possible keywords that are holding back potential traffic.

2.  Rich Snippet Structuring 

There are two types of snippets rich snippets and regular snippets. Both include a clickable title, a URL, and a meta description. Rich snippets have more condensed titles that include “|” instead of a dash (-), reviews and an image. How you structure the data and how search engines will display your information.

The difference may seem insignificant, it has been shown that search results with properly formatted rich snippets receive more clicks and have a higher CTR, which in turn increases potential Leads.

3.  Increased Page Relevance 

Google continues in its quest to provide the best web browsing experience to users. Besides offering users websites that are safe, Google searches for sites that best match the user’s search information – even if that has a minor difference from their actual query.

This means that search engines will evaluate the relevancy of the content on your website. One of the ways that Google assess the relevance of a website’s content is with Latent Semantic Indexing. Through Latent Semantic Indexing Google can gather content from billions of websites and pharse through the content, scanning for related terms and words.

How can you make your content relevant and comprehensive throughout 2018?

 You can start by researching the content of the top websites in your industry and look for commonalities among them. This, however, can take a long time, especially if you’re looking for particular terms or words. To speed up the process, you can make use of some of the free trials available with different website professional auditors.

4.  Don’t Miss Out on Voice Search Optimization   

Have you used Google’s voice command feature to make a search?

Yes, that’s what everyone’s switching to now.

Studies have shown that 55 percent of teens and 40 percent of adults use voice search every day. Online searchers love the convenience of getting search results without having to type in the query.

So, what’s the catch?

As a marketer, you need to figure out the conversational voice search queries in your industry and optimize your content for those queries.

How should you do it?

Use Rank Tracker to track for conversational search queries and optimize your site accordingly.

Just like in 2017, voice search will continue to pick up steam. Many consumers prefer the convenience of speaking over typing. Not only is it faster, but the queries can also be more detailed.

5.  Mobile Will be Even More Important

Smartphones dominate the landscape and more and more web browsing is occurring on mobile devices. In fact, the amount of people using their smartphones to browse the Internet is higher than the number who browse on a traditional desktop computer.

It is no longer optional to have a mobile-friendly website. It is now required and expected by the search engines and the users.

In fact, mobile friendliness is now a search ranking factor.

This is nothing new, and something you’ve probably heard about in many other years, but as each new device comes out and includes some kind of voice search function, you are going to have to really think about it going into 2018.

6.  SERPs are Personalised now

Besides the traditional search ranking factors, such as page speed, content relevancy and page authority, search engines are also using information about the user, such as interests, browsing history and location, to provide a personalized search results list.

Google, along with some other search engines, have been utilizing personalized SERPs for many years.

An SEO professional goal of getting to the top of search results will have larger implications. Pages that succeed in dominating search will not only get more initial traffic, but when a user clicks to their page, that business’s page will subsequently appear in future searches by that user.

This will give you a greater opportunity to dominate that user’s SERPs in the future.

7.) Video will be Bigger

It is going to be most common medium of getting information an generating organic traffic to websites. It’s very simple – video provides a superior experience to site visitors. Imagine visiting a software product website to find an introductory video of the product. You’ll naturally start watching the video before reading anything else.  It will give you information about the products in less time and you’ll definitely enjoy the experience of visuals, music, and characters in the video. 

By 2021 80% of all online traffic will be videos. – Googleplex

Make sure you are optimizing your videos for search before you embed them on your site. While videos are great for SEO, make sure you don’t create video content just because the format works better. Remember, content quality applies equally to video content and if you’re creating videos make sure they are good. Providing solutions to audience questions while creating entertaining video content will always hold the key.