SEO Trends That Will Dominate in 2018

As we are approaching the end of 2017, it is that time of the year when we start thinking about what to expect from the SEO in 2018. We have seen many of the newly appeared search industry trends at the beginning of this year, but only a few of them will become meaningful in 2018.

Google’s algorithm consists of over 200 factors that can affect your website ranking which means that SEO is very complex science. The challenging part represents ever-changing nature of the game rules rather than how much you know about certain things.

While search engines aim to improve their quality of search results, some ranking factors change, others disappear and entirely new ones appear. Staying on top of the inevitable changes in search engine optimization is a necessity if you want your website to be seen by targeted customers.

Also read: Quora for SEO: An Extensive Guide to Drive Traffic through Quora

Moreover, applying outdated methods and techniques can bring penalties as an outcome and can lower your listings in the search engine results pages in Google. To help you stay ahead of the game in 2018 and avoid getting penalized, we have provided you a list of most promising SEO trends that should be considered in 2018.

SEO Trends That Will Dominate in 2018

Voice Search

Voice search technology experienced a massive growth with the introduction of digital assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. It changed the way we communicate and process information. According to Google’s Behshad Behzadi, 55 percent of teens and 40 percent of adults use voice search daily and 1 out of 5 searches come from voice queries.

With the growing number of voice searches, search engines are expected to start optimizing their algorithms accordingly and to gradually shift to voice search. During next year, voice search will probably become more important, which will make SEO professionals rethink their strategies and voice-charge their keywords. Instead of using weirdly sounding queries, voice searchers use normal, conversational sentences.

Also read: Text to voice converters – Natural sounding Text to speech software for Windows

What we mean by this is that you will need to start optimizing your website for this new voice keywords. One great tool for researching questions that voice searchers are likely to ask is Rank Tracker. In a couple of minutes, you will end up with thousands of questions you can target and rank for.

Another important part is microdata elements like your business phone number, location, name, prices and others. They are important components of voice search and you should think about making them easily accessible.

The Rise of Visual Search and Image Optimization

Visual search is a very interesting topic and it represents a mixture of technological innovation and great user experience which can lead search options to a next level. Since the Internet is becoming more visually oriented, there is a big opportunity to explore and embrace visual search.

Most search engines have an image search option, but they are far from perfect. Yet, search engines are determined to improve their visual searches and their progress can be seen in Google Lens and Pinterest Lens given that both are capable of providing results based on as little as a photo of any random thing.

A successful SEO strategy in 2018 should study the way we consume visual content and try to understand most relevant parameters of visual search that search engines are using. Rich visuals and the use of neuroscience in SEO can truly make a difference. As the competition increases, more and more businesses are optimising their visual content for SEO purposes.

So you should definitely try to optimize your site as much as you can. Cometdocs is one online tool that can help you convert all the pictures you have in PDF or whichever format to JPEG with great accuracy and quality. They also have a PDF Converter Ultimate mobile application which is great if you are constantly on the move. Further, these tools can help with your content which is non-editable and needs converting.

Mobile-First Indexing

In 2018 big companies and brands will likely recognize the potential of putting mobile first, rather than putting it as their second priority since the recent studies shows that around 60 percent of traffic comes from mobile devices. This will be even more important if Google decides to finally deploy their mobile-first index.

 Also read: Does Changing WordPress Theme Affect SEO & blog Traffic

When this new index is out, websites will be ranked depending on their user experience of their mobile versions. This means that websites won’t be indexed if they don’t have their mobile versions. Google recommends that sites should have responsive theme or template. Mobile friendly websites are easily seen on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Further, e-commerce websites should also be updated, so that users can easily scroll through offered services and products.

If you want to see how well your website is optimised for mobile devices, you can use Google Mobile-Friendly Test which crawls your website like Googlebot and points out to things you need to improve.

Also read: What SEO Has to Do in Your Business Success?

To Conclude

As it looks like right now, 2018 will be a very interesting year for SEO. Well known, traditional techniques will still work, but a couple of new trends emerged and they may drastically change the current practice of optimizing for search. SEO reminds of a language, it constantly evolves and as well-known words go to oblivion and get replaced with new ones, so does old SEO techniques. We hope this article shad a little light on which direction your company should go in 2018 regarding SEO.

| About the Guest Author:

Guest Author
My name is Sandra Rodgers. I run the Cometdocs blog and post on it weekly. I love yoga, travel, photography, cooking foreign cuisine traditional meals and I’m a major tech enthusiast. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter, 

Categories SEO

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