Here are Ana Riascos predictions for mobile first, voice search, content, linking, speed, SEO, ecommerce, machine learning, virtual reality and video, to help you make more informed decisions this year.
As a result, I expect to see a focus on attribution tools and better data reporting as the industry scrambles to connect the dots of customer journeys and justify marketing spend.
My Digital Marketing Predictions for 2018
Mobile First: Google’s mobile-first index will become a bigger player starting around February. I expect that there will be a significant “disturbance in the force” when companies that have rested on their brand realize that the indexed content has changed enough to disturb their rankings.
For sites that are not mobile friendly, Google may continue to index the desktop version and hold off moving it to the mobile-first index. However, I don’t expect their rankings to hold since mobile user experience is the search engine’s top priority.
I anticipate Google will roll out mobile-first faster than expected. But even the preparation for it is changing the search engine’s index — which impacts rankings.
Voice Search: Right behind mobile, I predict voice search will be a major SEO focus in 2018. This is not because it impacts ecommerce so much as it impacts information and news sites.
Users will ask questions, and many sites are not well optimized to provide answers to questions. The traditional phrase-centric search will become archaic, and optimization will need to be about spoken Q&A instead of who used the keyword best.
Virtual assistants (such as Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant) and smart devices (such as Amazon Echo, Google Home) will continue improving their ability to interpret spoken language through machine learning. That’s a given.
Content Focus: Content is next in line for a major 2018 emphasis, but now more of the same. The creation of intelligent content that answers people’s needs is the role of the content writer (more so than the SEO), so empowered content teams with SEO tools will dominate this area.
This will be a period of significant growth in the development of content teams with tools and training, enabling an army of writers many times larger than the SEO team to start doing SEO themselves as the content is created.
Linking: Links have always been a headache for Google — they empower the search results, but they are also heavily spammed.
As good as the Penguin filter is, which has been running within Google’s core algorithm for over a year now, we see that unnatural links still work way too often in the search results. There’s room for improvement.
Speed: Another factor for digital marketing in 2018 will be the increased adoption of Progressive Web App (PWA) technology to achieve faster site speed. Both app and website developers will embrace this hybrid approach that is easier to maintain and promote while delivering impressive speed for users. There’s a lot of resources out there for details on PWAs; this recent post by Ana Riascos is one of my favorites.
SEO: So what about traditional technical SEO?
It continues and actually becomes more important. As easy links stop working, companies will increasingly turn to other parts of the algorithms — specifically content as well as on-page structure, navigation, internal linking and better compliance with SEO practices.
Building a site’s expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-A-T) will dominate this focus and become more critical across the board. The winning companies will be the ones with the best trained staff already working on an SEO-aligned content-based strategy aggressively. Between equally helpful content, the tie-breaker will be E-A-T, and we’ll see fewer sites ranking without it. This is likely to benefit established brands in the rankings.
Ecommerce: Google will step up as a major competitor in ecommerce this year. Google’s ecommerce site Express.Google.com has a network of manufacturers and resellers already in place. I believe it is poised to rival Amazon.
I order a lot of products online, and I think there is room for a second major service. Consider that as Amazon gains usage, people are going straight to Amazon.com. That threatens Google’s search business.
Machine Learning: Due to machine learning, Google’s ability to figure out what the user wants is advancing at lightning speed.
As Google’s algorithm learns to map user intent to each search query more and more accurately, sites must match that intent in order to rank. Marketers will need to take user-intent cues from Google by watching what results are shown as the SERPs fluctuate this year.
VR: Virtual reality (VR) and especially EEG controls will continue to grow throughout 2018. The technology enables remote conversations to feel like everyone’s in the same room.
Beyond chat rooms (e.g., Facebook’s experimenting with a VR hangout app), imagine business meetings leveraging VR to pull remote workers together in one place.
Video Marketing : It’s about time for Google to seriously leverage the revenue opportunity of YouTube (which it owns). I expect to see many more video results co-mingled with organic listings this year.
Video production for marketing purposes will grow exponentially. Video has been expanding as a marketing tool for years now, ever since Google first started blending results in Universal Search.
As a result, I expect to see a focus on attribution tools and better data reporting as the industry scrambles to connect the dots of customer journeys and justify marketing spend.
My Digital Marketing Predictions for 2018
Mobile First: Google’s mobile-first index will become a bigger player starting around February. I expect that there will be a significant “disturbance in the force” when companies that have rested on their brand realize that the indexed content has changed enough to disturb their rankings.
For sites that are not mobile friendly, Google may continue to index the desktop version and hold off moving it to the mobile-first index. However, I don’t expect their rankings to hold since mobile user experience is the search engine’s top priority.
I anticipate Google will roll out mobile-first faster than expected. But even the preparation for it is changing the search engine’s index — which impacts rankings.
Voice Search: Right behind mobile, I predict voice search will be a major SEO focus in 2018. This is not because it impacts ecommerce so much as it impacts information and news sites.
Users will ask questions, and many sites are not well optimized to provide answers to questions. The traditional phrase-centric search will become archaic, and optimization will need to be about spoken Q&A instead of who used the keyword best.
Virtual assistants (such as Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant) and smart devices (such as Amazon Echo, Google Home) will continue improving their ability to interpret spoken language through machine learning. That’s a given.
Content Focus: Content is next in line for a major 2018 emphasis, but now more of the same. The creation of intelligent content that answers people’s needs is the role of the content writer (more so than the SEO), so empowered content teams with SEO tools will dominate this area.
This will be a period of significant growth in the development of content teams with tools and training, enabling an army of writers many times larger than the SEO team to start doing SEO themselves as the content is created.
Linking: Links have always been a headache for Google — they empower the search results, but they are also heavily spammed.
As good as the Penguin filter is, which has been running within Google’s core algorithm for over a year now, we see that unnatural links still work way too often in the search results. There’s room for improvement.
Speed: Another factor for digital marketing in 2018 will be the increased adoption of Progressive Web App (PWA) technology to achieve faster site speed. Both app and website developers will embrace this hybrid approach that is easier to maintain and promote while delivering impressive speed for users. There’s a lot of resources out there for details on PWAs; this recent post by Ana Riascos is one of my favorites.
SEO: So what about traditional technical SEO?
It continues and actually becomes more important. As easy links stop working, companies will increasingly turn to other parts of the algorithms — specifically content as well as on-page structure, navigation, internal linking and better compliance with SEO practices.
Building a site’s expertise, authority and trustworthiness (E-A-T) will dominate this focus and become more critical across the board. The winning companies will be the ones with the best trained staff already working on an SEO-aligned content-based strategy aggressively. Between equally helpful content, the tie-breaker will be E-A-T, and we’ll see fewer sites ranking without it. This is likely to benefit established brands in the rankings.
Ecommerce: Google will step up as a major competitor in ecommerce this year. Google’s ecommerce site Express.Google.com has a network of manufacturers and resellers already in place. I believe it is poised to rival Amazon.
I order a lot of products online, and I think there is room for a second major service. Consider that as Amazon gains usage, people are going straight to Amazon.com. That threatens Google’s search business.
Machine Learning: Due to machine learning, Google’s ability to figure out what the user wants is advancing at lightning speed.
As Google’s algorithm learns to map user intent to each search query more and more accurately, sites must match that intent in order to rank. Marketers will need to take user-intent cues from Google by watching what results are shown as the SERPs fluctuate this year.
VR: Virtual reality (VR) and especially EEG controls will continue to grow throughout 2018. The technology enables remote conversations to feel like everyone’s in the same room.
Beyond chat rooms (e.g., Facebook’s experimenting with a VR hangout app), imagine business meetings leveraging VR to pull remote workers together in one place.
Video Marketing : It’s about time for Google to seriously leverage the revenue opportunity of YouTube (which it owns). I expect to see many more video results co-mingled with organic listings this year.
Video production for marketing purposes will grow exponentially. Video has been expanding as a marketing tool for years now, ever since Google first started blending results in Universal Search.
Thank you for sharing valuable information. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteVirtual Assistants In India
Nice post, very useful blogs with very useful information, thank you for sharing this post digital marketing institute in mumbai
ReplyDeleteI think this is an informative post and it is very useful and knowledgeable. therefore, I would like to thank you for the efforts you have made in writing this article. Digital Marketing consultant
ReplyDeleteSearch engine optimisation, most commonly abbreviated to "SEO", is the process of getting your website found on search engines like Google when people make a search relevant to your business, services or products. Info Bisnis
ReplyDeleteNice post. By reading your blog, i get inspired and this provides some useful information. Thank you for posting this exclusive post for our vision.
ReplyDeleteBig Data Hadoop Training In Chennai | Big Data Hadoop Training In anna nagar | Big Data Hadoop Training In omr | Big Data Hadoop Training In porur | Big Data Hadoop Training In tambaram | Big Data Hadoop Training In velachery