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6 SEO Trends to Watch in 2018
The constantly evolving landscape of SEO has entered into a new year. Experts at Google, Bing or Baidu are continuing to implement changes in indexing and ranking algorithms to better serve the growing internet user-base.
Increasing search engine sophistication is matched by attempts to optimize for it through various SEO strategies. Over the years, some strategies have managed to maintain their relevance, others saw an increase in prominence, while others yet became completely obsolete.
There is little indication that 2018 is going to be any different in this regard.
Some practices will doubtlessly continue to remain relevant (the focus on quality content, for example), others will probably see a decline (desktop-first optimization), and a host of new ones are already looming on the horizon.
The latter of these are probably the most interesting for SEO laymen and experts alike, as they present new opportunities for websites to get ahead in the search ranking game.
Being up to speed with what’s new and cutting edge in SEO is quintessential for building and maintaining a strong online presence, so the following list of search engine optimization trends in 2018 should prove to be useful to anyone looking to stay ahead of the curve.
Focus on Speed
Studies have shown that the attention span of a person today is about 8 seconds on average. This means that a webpage only has a few seconds to grab the user’s attention before he goes on browsing somewhere else.
And if a significant portion of this time is spent waiting for the page to load, the user will barely get a glance at the content before deciding to move on.
Teams at Google are keenly aware of this fact, which is why they stressing that load times below 3 seconds is the new standard. Pages with longer loading times will have significant reduction in their rankings, which means speed is likely to become the major factor of SEO in the coming year.
Featured Snippets
Search engine algorithms are starting to pay more attention to search query forms, showing results in new kinds of formats. Featured snippets is one such innovation.
When a search query is phrased as a question, a special block called a featured snippet is shown at the top of the results page with a summary of the answer.
Optimizing web page content for the featured snippet format increases the likelihood of websites being featured at the top of the results page, while their organic search rank might actually place them lower on the page. The Q&A format of content writing is likely to see an increase in 2018 as a result of this.
Linkless Backlinks
Backlinks are often taken as the gold standard factor of SEO. Investing in link building services and having numerous, quality inbound links from relevant websites is the foundation of having good search engine rankings. However, in 2018, things look like they are about to change.
Sophisticated search engine algorithms are getting better at content analysis day by day. They are starting to recognize particular brand names based on the textual content around them, giving them an indication of a brand’s online relevance without direct links to a website associated with it.
This trend is likely to have a significant impact on SEO content creation, and backlinks could potentially lose some importance due to this change.
Voice Search
With the rise of increasingly sophisticated voice-recognition software, more and more people are using their electronic devices hands-free through voice commands, and this goes for online searches as well.
However, the difference between how search queries are phrased in speech and in writing can be significant.
Search engine optimization now has to involve creating content with a greater focus on long-tail keywords and informal sentence structures associated with everyday speech. How one is asking the question is becoming as important as what is being asked.
Mobile-first Design
Google’s new mobile-first index has been in the news a lot lately, and for good reason. This new ranking factor has the potential to fundamentally reshape the search engine landscape.
Ever since their rise to prominence online, search engines ranked websites based on how optimized their content was for desktop users. With the new index, the optimization of content for mobile will become the new priority.
This shift comes in the wake of recent research which has shown that mobile browsing has, for the first time ever, surpassed its desktop counterpart. And while this piece of news was already around a year or two ago, search engines will continue to evolve their efforts around this method throughout 2018 and beyond.
SEO strategies focusing on mobile-friendly content are likely to become the standard as well.
Image and Video Search
AI-assisted pattern recognition in the medium of images and video is now becoming relevant search factors. Traditionally, search engines had to rely on descriptions, meta-data and references to image names in order to assess the relevance of images and video for a search query.
Advances in machine learning have made it possible to gauge this content independently, creating a new ranking factor in the process. This will make the appearance of non-textual SEO content creation strategies all but inevitable in the coming years.
Your Turn
Are you aware of other changes coming throughout 2018? Are you looking forward to any of these as an online publisher and business owner?
January 26, 2018 @ 4:44 am
Helen – Thanks for the info on the these trends. I had been hearing about “linkless links” for a year or two on Moz. I can’t remember the term they used for it, and I think you’re right that these will become more important over time. It really helps when you have good branding and a memorable name.
January 26, 2018 @ 8:35 am
Hi Helen,
Interesting article you have here. Truly said, website speed is critical to your SEO campaigns. Users will not want to sit back, fold hands and wait for your site to load. It puts readers away.
Also the rise of voice search has made SEO more interesting, and this means that content marketers will have to adopt to voice search trends when creating content for clients and their audience. The use of question keywords – long-tail keywords is remarkably amazing because it blends to how everyday people speak.
Mobile-friendly websites, yes! Recently Google indicated that it favors mobile-friendly websites over non-mobile sites, because almost everyone is on mobile nowadays, which makes it even more essential to test your site to figure out if it is mobile-friendly.
Thanks so much for sharing!
January 30, 2018 @ 8:00 am
Hi Helen,
I think website speed is a huge thing. I know that I personally won’t stay on a blog that takes forever to load. If it takes more than a few seconds to load, I’ll close it out and move on to the next site.
It’s nice to know that backlinks are not going to be such a huge factor. To tell you the truth, I don’t focus on building backlinks anymore like I used to in the past.
Today, I tend to focus on just writing helpful content. That alone has made a huge change in my traffic and conversions. I personally think that if you just focus on helping your audience with their problems, you will be fine.
This is the first time that I’ve heard about voice search. I’ll have to do some more reading on that because it definitely looks interesting.
Things are always changing on the Internet. That’s why it’s so important to stay updated on what’s new and what changes are coming.
Thanks for keeping us informed.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
February 11, 2018 @ 6:26 am
This is spot on Helen.
I think voice search optimization is a huge factor especially considering the rise of the Internet of Things. This is going to be a huge feature
You really have shared you information in a clear to understand way.
Thanks
February 11, 2018 @ 5:04 pm
Hi Helen,
Great post. SEO is forever changing and most times, practitioners play catch up instead of being proactive. Your post raises a few pointers that should help us stay on the front foot.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Best regards,
Pedro
February 21, 2018 @ 5:27 pm
Hi Helen,
I was badly hit by the 2018 SEO updates. Right now, I’m still trying to find out all what led to that. I have been able to fish out one and I’m working so much to clear that away from my table before moving over to another. That’s why when I see a post like yours, I quickly click and carefully read through it.
All you’ve said are valid points. The snippets you talked about is so true. I made a post recently that followed that pattern and in 2 days, it was already ranking highly.
Thank you for sharing.
Emenike
March 9, 2018 @ 4:09 am
Hi,
I was also looking for such kinds of tips to enhance my SEO skills.
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful post.
April 7, 2018 @ 12:43 am
Thanks for sharing this 🙂
April 12, 2018 @ 1:03 pm
I feel the focus on speed will have more and more emphasis over time. Slower websites have higher bounce rates; people would rather not wait for them to load. It’s logical that those sites are not as suitable to be in high rankings as compared to other faster sites.
Linkless Backlinks in interesting. This would mean Google is trying to think of another way to reward good content apart from looking at how many other sites links to it.
May 17, 2018 @ 11:59 am
I don’t agree with you @Susan for backlinks points but you are right that about the content. 🙂
Nowadays backlinks are more important but for it, you need to focus on quality content that helping your audience with their problems.
Backlinks are the most power play today.
Thanks for sharing this awesome post! @Helen
September 26, 2018 @ 6:15 am
Informative article. Great 2018 SEO trends. Thanks for sharing such an amazing article.
October 2, 2018 @ 11:43 am
In this post i would say some of the trends are really needed to highlight because they help us to gain the success and offer a better experience. Every year there may be many new trends and strategies will be released in this focus though we cant able to follow all but some of the trends need to definitely work it to gain the output.