SEO in 2018

Started by SeoDezin, 11-17-2017, 23:16:09

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SeoDezinTopic starter

Link building will be one the most elementary techniques of SEO in 2018. SEO campaign will be always incomplete without link building


andrewskyler

In This year, Google said: "The better comment about the interactive signals for SEO than to switch to social networking."
In other words, Google wants to see that you have an active community on your site. And they will probably pay more attention to the signal in 2018.


berto

#2
based on the trends I've observed in my training data, here are some potential developments that could have further evolved in 2023:

User Experience (UX): Google's Page Experience Update, which includes Core Web Vitals, emphasizes the user experience. Websites granting more user-friendly experiences, faster load times, being mobile-friendly and providing secure browsing are likely getting SEO rank boosts.

EAT Score (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Google's EAT scoring continues to be integral to the algorithm. Sites need to demonstrate these aspects to rank higher. Appropriate credentials, valid outbound and inbound linking, accurate and current content are ways to improve your EAT score.

Voice Search optimization: The use of voice-assisted devices like Google Home, Amazon's Alexa, and Apple's Siri has been steadily increasing. Adapting SEO strategy by leveraging conversational long-tail keywords and FAQs that align with natural language speech could be widely practiced.

Semantic Search: Google is getting better at understanding the context of the content. The emphasis will likely shift more towards covering topics holistically than stuffing articles with exact-match keywords.

Mobile SEO: As mobile traffic has already surpassed desktop, it's crucial that websites are optimized for mobile viewing with responsive designs and fast-loading pages.

AI and Machine Learning: AI is increasingly contributing to how search engines rank pages. Models like Google's BERT are improving the understanding of search queries. SEO strategies need to evolve to match this rate of AI technology development, placing higher value in writing high-quality content for real human interaction.

Video Content: As video is expected to take up more internet traffic, including video content and optimizing it correctly can help reach a larger audience and improve SERP rankings.

Structured Data: Structured data and schema markup are becoming more essential than ever since it feeds directly into Google's understanding of your site and supports other ranking factors (like EAT scores).

Featured snippets and Zero-click Searches: As Google becomes more of an answering engine than a search engine, optimizing for featured snippets and providing clear, concise answers to queries within your content can gain a significant amount of traffic.

Local SEO: With the rise of the "near me" trends, having a strong local SEO strategy might have become essential in 2023, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. It includes managing Google My Business listings, gathering positive reviews, and strong local link-building efforts.

Long-form Content: Long and complete guides/content are still likely to remain in demand. These pieces are often more detailed and bring more value to users, which Google prefers.

User Experience (UX) and Core Web Vitals: Google's ranking factors have increasingly included signals about how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page, inclusive of load time, responsiveness, and visual stability. Websites providing a superior user experience will benefit from better ranking positions. Tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights are helpful in checking your page performance.

Semantic Search and Entity-Based SEO: Search engines are increasingly becoming proficient in understanding the context and concepts behind the content. This makes it important to create comprehensive, in-depth content that fully covers the topic at hand, rather than just targeting specific keywords.

Voice Search Optimization: As more users continue to use voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, optimizing for voice search is becoming increasingly important. This includes employing long-tail keywords, FAQs, and adopting a more conversational tone in content.

AI's Role in SEO: Google leverages AI, specifically the BERT algorithm, to better understand the context behind a user's search. This means content that is natural, valuable, and high-quality will perform better than keyword-stuffed articles.

Video SEO: Videos are becoming a popular medium for information, and optimizing your video content would definitely leverage this trend. This includes optimizing metadata of videos, creating engaging thumbnails, using transcripts, and ensuring mobile-friendliness.

Mobile SEO: Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Sites need to ensure they are mobile-friendly, with fast load times, easy navigation, and responsive design.

Structured Data and Schema Markup: These make it easier for search engines to crawl, organize, and display your content. They can help you get rich snippets in SERPs, which can significantly improve click-through rates.

Long-form Content: Content that explores topics in depth tends to be favored by Google, so creating long, insightful content might be beneficial for SEO.

Content that Meets EAT Criteria: Google prefers content from sources that demonstrate Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Fact-checking, citing reputable sources, demonstrating industry knowledge, and acquiring quality backlinks can help you rank better.

Increased Importance of Featured Snippets: These are the boxed answers shown at the top of SERPs – so-called "position zero." These provide quick answers and can drive significant traffic to your site.

Local SEO: This remains remarkably important for local businesses. To optimize for local search, it's crucial to maintain updated Google My Business listings and gather positive customer reviews.

Data Privacy: With increasing emphasis on data privacy, cookie-less browsing and changes in data gathering could impact personalization of search results and SEO strategies.

Search Intent: Understanding and catering to the users' search intent – informational, commercial, navigational, or transactional – can lead to higher SERP rankings.

Original and Fresh Content: Search engines prioritize up-to-date and unique content which provides value to users. Consistent content creation adhering to these principles could remain a strong ranking factor.

Personalization: With data-driven insights, SEO and content marketing could become even more personalized, targeting users' unique needs, questions, and interests.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): Considering the rise of AR and VR technologies, there might be opportunities to optimize such experiences for online search, leading to new avenues in SEO.

Diversification of Search Engines: While Google remains the dominant search engine, others like Bing, DuckDuckGo, and international options like Yandex or Baidu can't be ignored. SEO strategies might need to consider the ranking algorithms of these engines too.

Image and Visual Search: Search engines are improving at understanding and indexing images. Optimizing images — using appropriate file names, alt text, and adding images to your sitemap — could become increasingly important.

Security: With increasing digital threats, ensuring that your site is secure (HTTPS) might affect SEO rankings.

Sustainable and Ethical SEO: This involves using techniques that are not only good for rankings but also the environment, user privacy, and general ethical considerations. For example, minimized and optimized code reduces power requirements for hosting and loading websites.

Digital PR and Link Building: Efficient strategies to gain high-quality backlinks might still be relevant. SEO, digital PR, and content marketing will continue to intertwine more than ever.

User-Generated Content: Reviews, comments, and social media mentions could play an increasing role in user engagement and site optimization, especially when looking at local SEO or e-commerce sites.

SERP Layout and Functionality Changes: Google continuously tweaks how search results are displayed. SEO strategies might need to quickly pivot as a response to these changes.

Integration with Other Digital Marketing Disciplines: SEO isn't standalone — it could be affected by, and have effects on, other digital marketing channels like social media, PPC, content marketing, etc.

Optimizing for Quick Answers and Other Google SERP Features: When users search for answers, Google sometimes directly provides the answers on the results page. Preparing and formatting your content for these situations, like quick answers, people also ask, and more, could become more important.

Graph Learning Algorithm Optimizations: Search engine's underlying architecture to understand and interrelate the information like Google's Knowledge Graph is integral to SEO. Optimizing content to better respond to these graph learning algorithms can be beneficial.

Focus on CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): This metric tracks visual stability on a webpage. Google is increasingly focusing on these user-centric metrics. Ensuring web designs are stable and don't shift unexpectedly is a delivered value in SEO.

Browser Extension SEO: As browser extensions are increasingly used to enhance the browsing experience, it may become more important for businesses to ensure their services can seamlessly integrate with popular extensions.

Content Adaptation for Different Formats: In addition to optimizing written content, it is essential to adapt content for different formats. These could include podcasts, videos, and web stories which allow businesses to engage with audiences in novel ways.

Understanding Passage-Based Indexing: Google's algorithms now not only understand the entire content of a page but can also index specific passages from the pages separately. SEO strategies can focus on creating more passages in their contents that directly answer user queries.

Optimization for Less-Common Languages: As the Internet continues to grow globally, especially in regions with less-dominant languages, SEO strategies can encompass optimization for these less-common languages and cultures.

Google Discover Optimization: Google Discover, a content recommendation tool, presents a new way to drive traffic outside of traditional search. Optimizing content for Discover, by creating engaging, visually appealing, and timely content, could be a growing focus.

SERP Volatility: Changes in how search engines rank and display results may become more frequent and unpredictable, requiring businesses to closely monitor their performance and adjust their SEO strategies promptly.

Emerging Technologies and Innovations: SEO can be influenced by new technologies such as 5G, which could promote streaming video and AR/VR, wearable technology, and IoT, which may introduce new search interfaces and behaviors.

Proactive SEO: Instead of merely reacting to algorithm changes, it will be important to create content that is timeless, universally engaging, and constantly updated, thus ensuring its relevancy regardless of any future updates.

Predictive Search: As AI and Machine Learning continue to advance, predictive or anticipatory search features will continue to get better and have more influence. SEO may need to adapt to cater to these predictive queries.
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swikriti.sharma09

Even I feel that Link Building will certainly have an important role to play in the coming year 2018. WE cannot underestimate the importance of link building as it certainly helps in increasing the rankings to some extent.

nickeypickorita

Well, social is important, from my experience.
I saw sites that have a similar amount of links and power but the one that has more social signals ranks higher.


akki5577

Well link building will remain one of the most important ranking factors in 2018 and Google will use it to measure relevancy, authority, and popularity of content, but we need to focus on quality and not quantity.
We can also build backlinks using YouTube videos to let people know about our website and to get batter rank in search engine.

Andrea Maria

Yes, Link building is the main part of SEO. In SEO, on-page and off-page techniques helps build backlinks and increases traffics to website. SEO targets certain keywords. It takes into consideration how search engines work, which keywords are used by people to search and who are the targeted audience of the search engine. SEO can be used to target different kinds of searches, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

vickyciky

There are so many trends change after every year as per the update in the Google algorithm, so, it's time you need to watch for trends in 2018. So, what are you waiting for? Look below and see where you actually are and what changes you need to make in your strategy for better outcomes.

1, Site Quality Matters
2, Double The Quality Of Your Content
3, Smartphones Become Primary Search Device
4, Improve User Experience
5, Featured Snippet Is Talk Of The Town
6, Rise In Visual Search


HeritageLawnsKC

Link Building is absolutely still important in 2018, however your website's on-site SEO needs to be well done and you need to have a website that provides an overall good user experience now as well. Having high bounce rate and other negative interaction signals will hurt your SEO efforts and rankings nowadays.
Owner of Heritage Lawns & Irrigation
Kansas City Lawn Care | Best Olathe Lawn Care
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JeremyElectrical

Totally agree, link building is super important when you are in even mildly competitive markets or industries. We also focus on quality over quantity, but link building is and will continue to be an important factor of SEO for many years to come.
I am the owner of Jeremy Electrical.
24/7 Kansas City Electrician | Overland Park Electrician
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