The importance of the SEO Industry has continued to increase over time. More and more customers are preferring getting their solutions online. The primary motivating factor is the convenience that comes with these online purchases. People like the idea of having to make their purchases from the comfort of their houses, offices, or even while in transit. The beauty of it is that the products will be delivered to the doorstep of the customer. The buyer is able to save a lot of time and money through online transactions.

Customers should be able to trace your brand through their online searches with an of ease. Most consumers prefer those sellers whose web pages appear at the top of the first page of the search engine.

Old SEO techniques are getting out as marketers continue to look for more efficient ways of promoting their products and services. 2018 will see a great improvement on the available strategies and the introduction of new ones. Some of them include developing mobile friendly websites, making your site super-fast, producing high quality content and updating your blog regularly. Marketers will also seek to understand the needs of their users, create SEO optimized landing pages, use voice search and longtail keywords more, switch the https of their website and make a strong presence on social media among other techniques. All these techniques will be geared towards increasing the visibility of the brand, conversion rate, and hence profitability of the enterprise. It will be more meaningless to attract visitors that you cannot convert into business.

Therefore, we at SearchEngineMagazine.com designed this infographic that will take SEO techniques and strategies to the next level in 2018.

Top 20 SEO Techniques and Strategies for 2018 (Infographic)

1. Develop Mobile-Friendly Website

Most people all over the world now use their mobile phones to visit the website. This number is expected to continue growing on a daily basis. In 2018, we expect more and more people to appreciate the use of their mobile devises to search information online. Therefore, you cannot succeed in 2018 SEO campaigns unless you make mobile friendly websites. Website owners are going to pay a lot of attention to mobile friendly websites so as to take care of the needs of a broad category of clients. In addition, more people are going to buy Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The increase will see a rise in the number of people who will be using mobile phones to visit the internet.

2. Make Your Site Super-Fast

The importance of speed in the modern generation is more than ever before. Everyone understands that time is money and no one will want to waste a lot of time in 2018. People will want to visit sites that can be able to load at a high speed. Any website that takes much time to load will record a very high bounce rate. Web designers will seek to develop websites that load with a lot of speed. They will avoid heavy features that take a long time to load. Visitors will be able to navigate through the various pages with a lot of speed. No one will have the hurry to rush through the web pages with a lot of speed because of the excellent user experience.

3. Produce In-Depth High-Quality Content

The type of content you publish on your website plays a critical role in attracting visitors. People are looking for highly engaging and interactive content. The content you publish on the website should give the readers the desire to read the next page. The best thing that boring content can do to your site in to increase the bounce rate. Therefore, content developers will seek to develop highly engaging and informative content. 2018 will see website owners pay a lot of attention to the quality of the content more than ever. Readers will also want to get the type of content that will add value to their level of knowledge. There will be more emphasis on keyword placement and the size of the publications.

4. Update and Republish Old Blog Post

Visitors are looking for fresh information on your blog. No one wants to come across the same information each time he visits your visitors. Having an excellent user experience means getting access to new content every now and then. Pull down the old content and publish fresh articles that are highly informative and engaging. Look at the type of content that succeeding companies that operate in your niche publish. Updating your website on a regular basis will define the SEO industry in 2018.

5. Know What Your Users Want

Understanding the needs of your target audience in 2018 will continue to drive the SEO market in 2018. You need strategies that are in line with the needs of your users. Do a lot of market research to have a clear picture of what your audience is looking for. No one will follow you if the message you are putting across is irrelevant.

6. Create SEO Optimized Landing Pages

A landing page focuses on information that is targeted towards a specific group of users. Landing pages are usually optimized to achieve five objectives. These include getting a visitor click, buy, register, tell his friend, and provide feedback. Optimization of landing pages increase their visibility in the search engine and marketers will continue using this strategy to record great success in 2018. There will be more emphasis on using the right keywords to optimize landing pages.

7. The Rise of Voice Search

There is a high tendency of internet users going preferring voice search. Websites that integrate this strategy in their marketing strategy in 2018 will have a competitive edge in the market. According to a keynote speech that was delivered by Behzadi Behdad at SMX West in March, voice search is currently the fastest growing form of search.

8. Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are more specific and longer that your visitors are more likely to use. It could be when they are using the voice search or when they are close to making a purchase decision. The Google algorithm has been paying attention to the use of long tail keywords and the trend is expected to get to the peak in 2018.

Read also: SEO Tools: The Complete List

9. Switch Your Website to https

Make sure you switch your website to https during the low traffic hours. This will make sure that Google bot can re-index your website. The action will help Google to make good use of the resources you have on the server. You need to understand that a medium size website may end up taking a long period to regain its rankings.

10. Make A Strong Presence on Social Media

Social media is the way to go in the modern world. Most people are spending several hours on social media each day. Create a social media page for your brand on all active social media platforms. You will be able to use it to convert a long list of clients.

Read also: How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan?

11. Design Your Website for Better User Experience

What users are looking for is a better experience. People will stay for an extended period on your website when they can navigate through the website with a lot of ease. Place the icons strategically so that viewers can take relevant action.

12. Optimize Your Content for Rank Brain

Optimization is key if you are looking for high ranking in the Google search engine. Use both in site and off-site optimization to rate highly. The starting point is using the right keywords to optimize your website. Search engines recognize well optimized pages with a lot of ease hence improving the ranking on the site.

13. Use Advanced SEO Internal Deep Linking

Internal deep linking will continue to be a useful SEO strategy in 2018. External SEO tactics involve those strategies that take place outside your site. Internal SEO entail all things that happen within your website. Entrepreneurs will try to make sure that they have easy to access and clean sitemaps for all search engine spiders. Also, there is need to put in place a special meta data of all posts under publication.

14. Link Out to Authority Sites

You need to identify the authority sites in your industry. Include these sites in your content because Google uses them to also rank your site. However, be keen to choose only links that Google recognizes as authority sites. Type the relevant keywords in the search engine box and note the links that come at the top of the first page.

15. Use Infographics to Increase Visibility

Infographics are very important in modern day SEO. Visitors want to have a feel of what they are reading through infographics. The importance of using infographics will continue to increase in 2017. Search for the best images and integrate them in your content. You will begin to notice a significant increase in the number of traffic and a high conversion rate.

16. Earned Niche Specific Links

You also need to earn niche specific links apart from providing links to your content. These links should originate from people who operate in the same industry if you want them to boost your ranking. It beats logic to get a link from a brand that does the exact opposite of what you are offering. The links should also come naturally because any form of deception can lead to penalties.

17. Prefer Quality to quantity in link building

The number of links is not as important as the quality of the links you receive and provide. It is more paying to have few but high-quality links. The best way to attract such links is publishing high quality content on your website. Make sure you are among the authority websites in your niche.

18. Diversify Your Traffic Sources

Relying on one source of traffic can be very dangerous. Suppose you heavily rely on Facebook them one day you receive negative publicity on the same site. You need sources that will trend positively even if the others have negative hashtags. Diversification cushions you against risk in the contemporary business world that is highly volatile.

19. Minimize Bounce Rate

The bounce rate can be caused by several factors including poor quality content and unresponsive websites. The only way of reducing the bounce rate is to create a user-friendly website. It will assist you to increase the conversion rate and increase your ranking in the search engine.

20. Use Schema Markup

The term schema markup refers to a code that developers put on the website to assist the Google search engine to give more informative results to users. Its functionality is similar to what you find in rich snippets. The 2018 SEO industry will see more use of schema markup to enhance the user experience.

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it is clear that the SEO industry will see great improvement in 2018. There will be attention on attracting the kind of audience that can be converted. Web developers are working around the clock to make sure that they are giving users the best experience ever. You need to stay top on the game to make sure that you are not left behind.