In the fast phased marketing world, where everyone desires to be at the top of everyone else, the marketing mediums and expectations are changing along with the standards.
SEO has been one of the prime focuses of online businesses for the past few years, and with every human gaining access to internet in this world, ecommerce and business online has grown exponentially, which guides firms to compete using higher level of techniques to gain the top ranking in search engines, mainly Google.
In the current year 2017, SEO has emerged from just content, keyword based to algorithm, and analytics based which require prominent developer skills. With almost most of the world trying their best to carve a niche in SERP, SEO management has become one of the most prudent fields to hire and to develop.
However, it is not just the websites trying to improve their site; change entails also the Search Engines in frequent intervals. Google keeps improving their Search Results to make user experience better and safer, with quality being the main concern, and their updates. SEO improvements and new methods can be sometimes seen prominently in their website, also some developers and SEO experts reveal about the changes Google has made to make SERP better in Social Media, and Forums such as the SEO Round Table.
Google is making more experiments and implementations these past few months, and with the year ending soon, we can expect advance technologies and methods from Google to make the user experience smoother and efficient in the upcoming year. The most expected advancements are AI and Machine learning with the ongoing news about their latest experiments.
The old methods does not factor anymore with SEO, using more keywords is not going to help you get that desired ranking.
Here are some of the most expected changes and the things to consider making your site's raking better in 2018.
Mobile Optimization is the new hot topic
A case study proves that about 60% of the internet users are from mobile phones, typically smart phones. A larger part of the world population is Smartphone users that loves to stay atop information and save time with On-the-go activities. As this is a major change in advancement, we can expect more mobile internet users in the upcoming years, which make it mandatory for Google to optimize all the websites as per mobile view, and the websites that does not support mobile view are shunted far behind in the rankings.
For a better mobile view experience, improve the factors that may irritate a smart phone user who scrolls through your website in a mobile web view, like Ad lines, popup and complicated fonts. Adding advertisement links in your page may block your site content from plain view just like popup do; hence, avoiding them would be a big advantage for a better user experience in mobile view. Whereas, keep the fonts simple just to make it easier for users to go through without much confusion.
Google has test tools to check the pages in your site for their mobile friendly optimization. In addition, it is recommended to optimize your site as a mobile friendly zone, because as Google has posted "To make our results more useful, we've begun experiments to make our index mobile-first. Although our search index will continue to be a single index of websites and apps, our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site's content to rank pages from that site." However, it has been a while since Google released this statement; it is evident that those pages that still appear in a desktop view for mobiles are taking a ride to the back of the line.
Hence, keep Mobile friendly optimization as your first priority in 2018.
A Secure Site is the Key to Become the Most Preferred Site
Google has long abandoned Unsecured sites to the backstage in rankings, and the recent Ransomware attacks has only increased people's insecurity towards internet browsing and shopping. Google prefers to rank sites with "https" higher than "http" sites.
As more security means more trust and increase in frequency, secure your site with SSL Certificates to give a virtual assurance to the users and to gain more boost up your rankings. Chrome lists unsecured sites flagging them as unsafe, and this will bring a bad reputation for your site and will make the potential traffic to stay away.
Secure your site with a High-security EV SSL Certificate (Extended Validation), which would give the users required information about your organization or business, which helps gain, their trust more. SSL Certificates can be attained easily in this digitalized world, and a more secure EV SSL Certificate not only provides you with a secure connection but the crawlers detect the security protocols easily and they list your site higher in SERPs.
Make your content Voice Friendly
With the increase in advancements of Google now (Ok Google), Siri and Cortana voice search has become a favourite among people. Search Engines are implementing experiments with AI and Machine Learning to improve user experiences, and to give them a better result. People in this competitive world, pertains to stay more time-saving and prefers Hacks for everything to work out in a smooth and a simple way without investing too much of our time in a single activity. This change in human behaviour that keeps growing more relevant in even Search Engines enhances the voice search experience to make the results voice friendly, these voice searches delivers direct results to their home pages, hence, this is a category that must be addressed for SEO improvement in 2018.
Therefore, this makes the content in your site to become more relevant to conversational tone and a questionable format, which will boost the search crawlers to prefer your site more frequently.
Having content that implies smooth conversational tones in keywords will make your site more available for users, as an easier to find content is more relevant.
A Faster Loading Page gets a Faster Access
Google provides its results in an average speed of 0.60-0.70 seconds, and a search Engine that provides for user expectations, processes fast loading pages in its initial ranking. Google's top preference is faster-loading pages to be showcased in the initial results; a slow loading page, which makes the user wait longer, is not something that we desire. We mostly abandon pages that take longer time to load, since the main factor in time saving browsing is a faster loading page that adheres to Google and user's expectations.
An average page that the crawlers choose must contain a loading time in maximum of 3.5 seconds, and the remaining will be standing at the back of the line, as they are perfectly deemed unnecessary.
To improve your page speed, the first step is to test your page loading speed through tools such as Pingdom or Gtmetrix. If your page loading time is slow, improve the speed by lightening the page through lessening the file size of any media available, and optimize the formats, loose links and pointless data.
Since marketing through SEO is a competitive environment, speed is more central to the theme.
Backlinks are more About Quality than Quantity
Creating more backlinks to your website through unnecessary ads, forum link postings, paid promotions or fake links that redirects the user are a negative marking for your site. Google prefers backlinks that are more genuine in nature, such as posts through guest blogging, content marketing with good quality content are more preferred to be deemed as genuine backlinks.
A quality backlink is about relevant and should be from a High-quality website. One backlink from a better ranking website equals hundreds from non-relevant sites.
The backlink to your page should connect with relevant content to your topic. If your post were about make-up trends and tips, the relevant content would be fashion trends or tips for a healthy skin from a famous website. The crawlers take into account relevant backlinks and these will improve your SEO rankings, because Backlinks are one of the top ranking factors in Google's search algorithm.
Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn provides 40% more increase in quality backlinks to your site; an active social media profile will boost your site to more followers.
Long-Tailed Keywords Reap More Benefits
Gone are the days of placing more relevant keywords to optimize your site for Search Engines, as a normal search provides more competition in results, it has become evident that those multi-numbered keywords in a page does nothing to improve your site rankings anymore. Long-tailed Keywords are Keywords in the form of phrases or conversational, which would provide relevant references to search words than single keywords which might not grab the attention of the Search crawlers.
Just the same, metatags have become less important but a good H1 title tag with keyword placed in the Title may get the jackpot that you desire.
When it comes to keywords, a URL that is short and easy without numerous codes and numbers but containing a part the title or keyword is one of the key ranking factors.
Provide Relevant High-Quality Content
The content that your site provides must be of high quality, well-researched content. Google wants to provide its users a decent quality experience, which makes it choose well-structured content over poor ones with lesser quality content.
Since Google has been proving snippets and lists for search results in the past few months, it's more prudent to list out your content for easier observation by the user. Make the content more engaging and add more research facts to intrigue them further, because, the longer the user stays in your site, the more the crawlers prefer your site and term it as a high-quality one. Make your content longer with well-framed, well-researched content, a good content should be at least about a 1000 words.
If you run out of ideas for content or topics, you can always search for keyword topics or content ideas in Google News and many other sites.
Keep posting blogs and new content in your site, just to stay active. A well active site with quality content is more preferred by the crawlers.
Conclusion
Many factors have been changing in terms of SEO and 2018 is going to be more tricking with more advanced factors to consider improving site rankings. Keep tracking the advancements and ranking factors to boost your site ranking in this fast-changing world of marketing.
