The best SEO trends for 2018

Keep reading if you’d like to find out more

For any business that has a presence online, making use of search engine optimisation is a must to ensure visibility. SEO is something which is advancing more quickly than you think and so it is important to understand how it works and how to use it best to your advantage. In this article, we are going to look at the best SEO trends for 2018, so keep reading if you’d like to find out more!

Of course, optimising your website does not have to be your own responsibility, there are plenty of companies that will help you with this to ensure that your website is compatible with what your target audience is searching for. A leading Oxford SEO agency for example will help you out with both local SEO and organic SEO to ensure that you are getting the best results possible. Make sure to find out more about what this company can do for you if you are interested in improving your SEO and you’re based in the Thames Valley.

SERP features

No longer is organic ranking the best way to increase your traffic as there are so many other features that sites like Google have introduced which are distracting the users from the organic list. These features are called SERP features and include things like featured snippets, knowledge panels and local packs. When a user searches, these features are breaking up the results and providing other options that can be clicked on – reducing the likelihood of your high ranking result showing up. With the increase in these, it is important that you are aware of how to manage this. To get around this trend, you’ll need to monitor which features show up when your keywords are entered and also track how you rank with these features. There are some applications that can help you with this so make sure to stay on stop of this trend.

Structured data

When it comes to structured data, there are some questions over how it affects the ranking. However, in 2018, we are seeing more people increasing their listings’ click-through-rate using rich snippets. Choosing to do this can really make your result stand out from the others and so it is something which should not be ignored. Make sure to understand how your data is formed and what vocabulary it uses. Telling search engines how to display your result in the SERPs can help you stay on top and get more visitors to your site. Track your results to ensure that it is making a difference and is showing up properly.

Voice search

Although voice search has taken some time to become something which people are actually using, it is becoming more common and so it is important that your site is compatible with this. This trend requires you to add terms that are more conversational in their tone rather than the keywords that users tend to type when on a desktop or mobile search engine. Your customers might be using tools like the Amazon Alexa or other virtual assistants to search so you need to get yourself involved in this before it is too late. You can find out what sort of questions are being searched online so make sure not to forget about voice searches when optimising your site.

Speed

As people become more impatient, speed is becoming a more important signal when it comes to ranking. In 2018, we see that people are wanting their sites to load in less than three seconds and so for developers, it is extremely important to achieve this. If you can manage to get your site to load quickly, you will affect your user experience and your overall ranking. Don’t let your site get left behind when it comes to speed as this is becoming more and more important as time goes on and sites load faster. There are many ways that you can change the speed of your site so make sure not to ignore this trend.

Final thoughts

SEO will always be changing, and certain factors will soon outweigh the things that you have spent lots of time on before. Keeping your SEO up to date with the latest trends can massively affect how visible your website is and how many visitors you get to your site. In 2018, there are a lot of things that are changing with SEO and so if you aren’t able to stay on top of these updates and changes then make sure to get the help of a professional SEO agency. They’ll be able to optimise your site properly with their up to date knowledge. Don’t let your website get left behind because it isn’t fast enough, or it isn’t optimised for voice searches. Make sure to regularly check for SEO trend updates and you’ll have more visitors in no time.