SEO in 2018
It’s February, and we’ve just begun new year. It’s that time where everyone starts making a bunch of resolutions, many of which won’t be kept. But in a landscape of goals for weight loss, healthier eating, and less social media usage, taking your SEO to the next level should be a goal that you keep.
We’re already seeing many signs of what’s to come in 2018, and the SEO techniques many of us are just starting to use are going to be even more relevant as we head into the new year.
It’s all About Vocal Searching
While there are a lot of us out there who aren’t interested in voice search and electronic assistants quite yet, there are a growing number of us who are, and that number is growing every day.
From 2008 to 2016, voice searching increased by 35x with 40% of adults using voice search once per day. With nearly half of us using voice search, it’s clear that Comscore’s prediction of 50% of all searches being completed via voice by 2020 will be true even before their predicted deadline.
The SEO techniques for vocal searching blend beautifully in with a trend that’s already been on the upswing for a number of years: quality content.
Create Quality Content
Fooling major search engines like Google is a process that gets tougher and tougher by the day. SEOs that are still trying to keyword stuff are going to have to give it up. If you haven’t already, it’s an easy thing to do: just stop. Once you do, you’ll see the effectiveness of your SEO increase almost immediately.
When paired with vocal searching, we will see a change something like this:
- Say you’re looking for a sushi restaurant in New York City. Original searching would be typed in to Google as “sushi restaurant NYC” or something along those lines.
- If you were asking a friend for recommendations for a sushi restaurant in New York City, how would you word it? Probably like “Where is the nearest sushi restaurant?”
Search engines are constantly being reworked to respond to more organic terms. By location integration and higher intelligence when it comes to language recognition, it’s easy to see that the end goal is for us to be speaking to our smart phones exactly as if they were our best friend.
Smartphone Nation
The future is mobile! Your smartphone can do more and more every year. Mid-way through 2013, mobile users overtook desktop users for global millions searching. In the United States, internet users spend 71% of their online time on their smart phone, with Canadians spending 62% of their time—and those numbers are only growing.
Having a website that’s optimized for smartphones isn’t just a good idea, it’s a necessity if you want to survive in today’s market.
Quality Over Quantity
The quality over quantity approach is growing more than ever in 2018. While many SEO principles are staying the same, the new techniques we’ve been gearing up for the past couple years are going to mean more than ever.
With a focus on organic and friendly voice-operated searching, your SEO is going to have to be more user-friendly than ever. It’s a brave new world, but with the right techniques you’ll get through just fine.
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