SEO factors and their impact on digital marketing strategies in 2018

As you may know, Google is constantly evolving its search ranking algorithms every year.

In 2017, Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) emerged.

In 2018, many new trends are emerging, which would affect SEO factors.

Here are some of the upcoming SEO trends in 2018:

1. Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Features- The SERP feature is any inorganic result that is displayed on a search engine results page, such as AdWords, news unit, rich snippets, and site ratings. Such features add a visual layer to an existing result. Site links, videos, tweets, and shopping results would also be featured prominently on search engine results pages.

2. Rich Snippets – Web developers add structured data markup to their web page. A rich snippet improves search results by adding images, ratings, and a website URL. Rich snippets on web pages must include a ‘|’ symbol on it.

Such rich snippets would get more click-through rates.

3.Page Speed ​​- In today’s fast moving environment, where speed is the most crucial factor, this is a more dominant SEO factor, Google recommends a page load speed of 3 seconds or less to load any web page. Google provides a tool – Page Speed ​​Information, which would help you optimize your web page speed, it also provides information on various optimization techniques to improve website speed.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

4. Relevance of the content – Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a method of indexing and retrieval. It is a mathematical technique called singular value decomposition to identify a pattern, between terms and concepts.

Search engines rate your website content using LSI, scan your website and check the content using related terms and keywords. More attention should be paid to write relevant content that matches your topic.

5. Google Voice Search – On Google, people search for spoken words instead of typing in the search box. An SEO strategy should include conversational words.

6. Mobile Friendly Websites – Billions of people use the mobile version of websites as it is very convenient. The mobile site is a search ranking factor; in fact, Google indexes your mobile website before the desktop version of your website. Responsive web design feature compatible with many web development technologies such as bootstrap which makes your website mobile or tablet friendly.

Why mobile-optimized sites?

• A desktop version of the websites does not seem user friendly on mobile devices.

• 2.6 billion active smartphone users

• Google labels mobile-optimized sites as mobile-friendly.

7. Linkless Backlinks – A news article mentioning the name of a brand, business, or a review done for a business or brand on another website, blog, or on social media are examples of backlinks without links becoming relevant today. Relevant articles, blogs or social media must include the brand or trade name.

You have to align your online business with the latest search engine updates, spending a lot of time and effort.