Mid-Year Analysis: 3 SEO Trends to Focus On!

SEO for Voice Search

We detailed this new trend already, but it is so important that it bears repeating: Google Home, Siri, Alexa, Amazon Echo… all of these new voice-controlled smart devices will search the internet and retrieve the most relevant answers to their users’ queries. But people don’t use voice-controlled search in the same way they would when writing out a search query. For example, are you more likely to say “marketing service Santa Ana, California” or “What is the best marketing service in Santa Ana, California”? The latter, of course. No one really talks in strange, fragmented sentences when using smart devices. So, optimize for mobile queries, of course—but also remember to include strategies for voice-activated searches!

Choose User Experience Over Raw Rankings

You might have a gorgeously-designed website and awesome products, but if a visitor isn’t having a good time using your website, none of that matters. Essentially, this means that a user actually needs to, well, use your site for Google to find it worth ranking higher. Some factors to consider when designing your site for the best user experience:

• Speed: Loading time, responsiveness of videos, etc.

• Content: Quality, length, relevancy, readability

• Ease of use: Are your menus arranged logically? Can a visitor easily find what he or she is looking for? Are all of your links up-to-date?

While this isn’t necessarily a “trend,” it’s essential for today’s marketers. There is no reason for someone to have a poorly-designed website in 2018; not when there are so many great ways to build an attractive, responsive, and customer-centered website! (We offer this service too!)

Mobile-First Indexing

Mobile-friendly content is a necessity: 69% of consumers all across the globe use mobile devices to research products before making a purchase. 48% of buyers use smartphones to search before purchasing a product. And mobile devices drive 80% of global internet usage. If you weren’t sure why mobile was so important before, you should be able to see it now: the future of search isn’t on desktops; it’s mobile devices.

Mobile-first indexing simply means that Google will use the mobile version of content for ranking and indexing sites. Google has, up until 2018, used the desktop version of a page’s content, but mobile-first indexing means Google will crawl and index pages with a smartphone agent to best align with popular search habits.

This is not an exhaustive list of SEO trends to pay attention to in 2018, but these tips are a good place to start. And, as always, if you want some assistance with your SEO services, simply schedule a demo to see how Zoek can help you rank. Or, you can call one of our personal marketing consultants and they will be happy to help you!

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