SEO Trends to watch in 2018
Mobile-First Index
As we mentioned in our previous article, Google are talking of launching the Mobile First Index – for a more in-depth understanding on Mobile First, take a look here. In brief, Google will be incorporating information from mobile sites, potentially more so than desktop ones. Bearing this in mind, mobile responsive and friendly websites mustn’t be an afterthought, they're an absolute must-have.
Voice Search
I remember the amazement of ‘Siri’ the first time I encountered it, the whole concept of asking a device a question and getting an answer was astonishing. Now with the likes of Amazon’s Alexa in the mix, the voice search and digital assistant market is growing and moving away from just mobile devices. Whilst there are countless comical videos trawling the internet of digital assistants not quite providing the answer you were looking for, it’ll be something that becomes more refined over time and thus increasingly popular.
Voice search will need to be considered as websites continue to develop their SEO; it’ll need to focus more on long tail keywords and the natural language that matches a normal, conversational tone, rather than a pre-thought out typed question.
Link Building
Link building, an arguably tedious task for an SEO whizz, but it’s not something that is expected to disappear in 2018…*sigh*. However, link building needs to be high quality, if it’s not adding value to your site – don’t bother.
Rather than adopt the strategy of building links in as many places as possible, in 2018 it would be seen to be better to build relationships with valuable contacts, helping your brand to develop links that’ll be more beneficial in the long term.
User Experience
If you’re a regular reader of the Studio44 articles page, you’ll know we bang on about the importance of User Experience (UX). Ultimately, good UX will naturally increase the chances of the user engaging with the page, enjoying their experience and ultimately a Call to Action. Bearing this in mind, you need to be on your game when it comes to UX: monitor your site’s speed, its navigation structure and its readability – if those things are slacking, so will your SEO.
UX has very much come to ‘survival of the fastest’ and is one of the biggest, most important UX factors. So how fast is fast? A page loaded in under 3 seconds is fast, it is also what Google expects of a successful website. Don’t drown in a sea of websites because you can’t keep up!
Machine Learning
Whilst we’ve touched on the growth of a more personalised experience through the use of voice search, this personalised level will continue to rise throughout 2018 with the growth of machine learning and artificial intelligence. In our general 'digital marketing trends to watch' article, we touched on Google Rank Brain, the algorithm that learns from your search experience to increase the relevancy. We expect to see this affect SEO, but only as Artificial Intelligence continues to grow and we gain a deeper insight and understanding into how we can optimise our sites to accommodate this.
Concluding
Every year, SEO and digital marketing evolve, and in the modern, technology-heavy world, we can only expect this to happen. Our traditional SEO techniques will always be relevant, but with continued development, we need to keep an open mind with new SEO tips and tricks. It’s wise to keep your eyes and ears open to the world of SEO. Pop in for a chat or contacts us today for any SEO help!
