SEO tips for 2018
The rules for search engine optimization change continuously. As an owner of a website or blog, it is crucial that you keep up with the various changes. With our seo tips, you will be able to maintain high ranks, and therefore, enjoy greater success with your site. So what SEO methods should you implement in 2018? Let’s find out.
Mobile-First Index
More and more people are using the internet on their phones. So it shouldn’t surprise you that Google will be using mobile websites to provide search results. Your mobile site will be used as the primary website when determining your rank on the search engines. For this reason, you should aim for consistency across your main desktop site and the mobile version.
You will also need to change your m dot site to a more responsive version. It will take longer for the search engines to index m dot content, and that will not be favorable to your site.
Provide Comprehensive Content
Google aims at providing its users with the most useful content based on given keywords. It can identify pages that cover topics to great depth. Such sites are ranked higher.
One way of creating comprehensive content is to always create long articles. Your content should always range from 1000 to 2000 words. Also, make sure you always use LSI (Long Semantic Indexing) keywords. If you have trouble coming up with suitable LSI keywords, you can use services such as the LSI graph or Google’s Keyword Planner. That said, the service does not just go for any keyword-stuffed article; make sure you provide useful, original and comprehensive content.
Make Use of Video Content
The demand for video content is increasing every year. By 2021, video content will be responsible for about 80 percent of all online traffic. To make sure your site maintains its high rank, you will have to incorporate videos into your pages.
Besides increasing traffic to your site, videos will increase your dwell time (the time visitors spend on your site). Dwell time is another important factor used by Google to rank websites.
You can use YouTube to add videos to your site. YouTube is the largest online video service, so you will be sure to gain lots of benefits from using their service. You can use videos as additions to your text-based content.
RankBrain
RankBrain is a key factor in ranking websites. It simply monitors how users interact with the results given by the search engine. Two important factors contribute to RankBrain: click through rate (CTR) and dwell time.
CRT is the percentage of people that click through your pages. On the other hand, dwell time is the period they spend on your website or pages. To keep your site at the top, you will need to maximize these two aspects.
A good way to keep viewers on your site for a long time is to make your content readable and visually appealing. Long articles should always be split using subheadings so users can easily go through the content. Also, you can use internal links to keep them for an even longer time. You can increase the click through rate by using headings that trigger interest or an emotional response from viewers.
Consider Voice Search
Previously, voice search was quite poor, and almost no one bothered using it. However, it has grown to become more accurate and sophisticated. You can take advantage of voice search to increase your click through rate.
Google voice search usually reads out the featured snippets. These are the pages that are featured at the top of the search results, although they are not necessarily the top searches. That said, the snippets are always from the first page of Google’s searches.
The snippets are also usually delivered in the question-answer format. You can structure your pages to reflect this dichotomy to increase your chances of getting featured in the snippets. This will, in turn, improve the credibility of your site.
Don’t Ignore Links and Great Content
Links and content are some of the key things that will not change with regard to SEO in 2018. It is important to make sure you provide your visitors with useful and unique content. Also, you should use credible and authoritative inbound links. You can also publish unique studies and data to increase the authority of your site.
Conclusion
Most of the factors used to rank sites in 2017 will still be important signals in 2018. However, you should consider our seo tips such as mobile-first ranking, videos and voice search. These are going to be strongly used to rank sites in 2018.