SEO Guide: The Right Approach to SEO in 2018
New to Online Marketing? This SEO Guide will walk you through all you need to know about how to approach SEO in 2108
Launching a new website or even getting a relatively new website on track can be difficult, take a look through this SEO guide for start ups to make your 2018 more visible in Google Search.
As we move into 2018, online businesses continue to thrive and competition to gain an edge in the online landscape has never been more apparent. Small business owners continue to look towards SEO as a means of driving visitors, leads and sales. Over the years SEO has changed a lot, but many tactics and strategies have stayed the same. Surely 2018 will bring new trends in SEO and this article will serve as an SEO guide to make sure your start up business or new website uses the right approach to SEO in 2018.
We have seen that search engine optimization has become quite a vital part of online marketing campaign, so there has been a lot of improvement in its methodology. There are many different approaches to SEO which can make it difficult to understand what is effective and what is not.
Let’s take a look at what you need to know about SEO for a new site and how you can implement these tactics.
SEO Guide to Factors Should You Understand
It’s going to be essential to have an understanding of some key on-site components to begin setting up an effective SEO approach in 2018 and it all starts on-site.
1. Website Structure:
Your website needs to be mobile friendly and responsive. Moving beyond the overall framework, your site needs to be laid out in clear easy to read and eye catching sections.
a) Use of Headers & sub-headers:
Your viewers don’t want to spend their day sifting through your information, and that’s exactly why the use of headers and sub-headers is so important to draw their attention quickly to key points. IN the example above, Taster’s Club does a great job of calling attention to key navigation items, call to actions, and key points of interest. Having headers and sub-headers isn’t just important for search engines it’s important in making your site easier for the users to go navigate your content.
b) Get to The Point Already:
Reading long sentences can be eye-fatiguing for many users. More than just eye fatigue — it’s just plain boring. Breaking long paragraphs and sentences into eye catching to the point messages is a far better approach to online content. This will naturally create an effective use of white space between messages that is also a much better delivery tactic. You can see Taster’s Club is firing on all cylinders here.
c) Quality of Content:
Improving the quality of the content is known to be an important factor for having the better search engine optimizations. Studies run by both Neil Patel and Brian Dean, founders of QuickSprout and BackLinko have found that;
Publishing Comprehensive, In-Depth Topical Content Does Improve Rankings.
Content rated as “topically relevant” (via MarketMuse), significantly outperformed content that didn’t cover a topic in-depth. Therefore, publishing focused content that covers a single topic may help with rankings.
Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.
If you’re struggling to find topics that your audience will love, check out this post.
If you’re still struggling to come up with topics or writing about topics, you can outsource your content writing.
Outsourcing content writing isn’t easy though, there are lots service providers and lots of factors to consider.
Here are a few things you’ll want to look for when deciding to outsource your blog:
Vet Your Content Writing Service Pr0vider
Experienced SEO content writers will be using tools like Ahrefs Content Explorer, or Buzzsumo, to find blog topics that are gaining traction with your target audience.
- This will ensure that the topics you will be publishing will be on point with your core audience.
- Keeping up with industry trends and publishing articles about them can help land a slew of new leads to your site.
- Combine this with good SEO and keyword research, you’ll turn a blog article into a traffic magnet.
- Don’t settle for less here. Pumping out 500 word articles about “5 social media tips” isn’t going to cut it. Get specific!
d) Regular Keyword Research:
Doing regular keyword research is one of the key foundational elements of SEO. This is especially true for a small business, because a small business or brand new site just isn’t going to have the authority to rank for a lot of the more generic search queries with high volume. That doesn’t mean that you can’t capitalize on high volume long tail search terms.
Keyword research can be absolutely exhausting. There are a few tips that will help you stay on point to discover keywords that will work for you without you losing your mind:
- Stay on point with the subject matter of your topic!
- Look for keywords that have some search volume.
- Then check those keywords for the level of competition – you want low competition.
There are a Ton of great keyword tools out there and any professional SEO will use multiple keyword tools for their research. Again, if you’re new to this, you don’t have to over-complicate things…
Just remember, focus on writing content that your audience wants and stay on topic.
You can then use these free keyword tools to help hone in on some keywords you will have a better chance of ranking for:
1. KeyWords Everywhere – The Keywords Everywhere extension is your free keyword tool. It can be easily installed on either Chrome or Firefox. The best part is that we show you useful google keyword search volume, cost per click and competition data of keywords on multiple websites.
2. Cross Check Keyword Ideas using Google Keyword Planner –
- Search for new keywords using a phrase, website or category
- Then get search volume data and trends
- And then, multiply keyword lists to get new keywords
3. Lastly, you will want to check how competitive those keywords are:
In the example I used, “free keyword research tools” the results indicate that I should really look for an alternative long tail term, because right off the bat the search results page is dominated by some really heavy hitters.
I’m not going to have very good luck going head to head with Neil Patel, serps.com and Wordstream over this keyword. Just to do due diligence, Let’s check how competitive this phrase would be to rank for:
Using another FREE tool, SEO Review Tool, you can quickly check out your competitors to see how many links and how high value the referring domains are for the pages currently ranking for the search term:
In this instance, if I know my topic is about keyword research, I might want to look at some other alternatives that are still topically related, such as; “youtube keyword suggestion tool” and variations on that phrase.
Finding content topics and doing keyword research is really the first part of publishing content that will rank in Google. To actually get your content to rank, you’re going to need to get familiar with some of these SEO practices:
2018 SEO Guide to Search Trends That Affect Rankings
SEO Guide for search and off-site SEO Tactics to Rank in Search
SEO is important for every online business and 2018 is no different. Using some of the latest trends in SEO will help you to reach your goals.
What SEO Trends are going to help you get to the top in 2018?
Have a look at these trends that you should be adopting for SEO in 2018:
1. Link Building:
Link building is not a new tactic, but is certainly one you should get real familiar with. Creating quality long term links is the single most important follow up to publishing content.
The key to backlinks – make sure they are high quality.
Most small business owners launching a new site won’t have a clue where to start and worse; there’s a ton of really bad link building information out there…. The kind of stuff that could get your content tanked instead of ranked.
So, where do you start?
Here’s a simple approach to begin building backlinks:
a) Start promoting your content through social channels. Sharing socially creates backlinks. Social media websites and online directories (such as Facebook, Twitter, etc) create strong social signals and yes backlinks that lead back to your website. Furthermore, publishing consistently on social channels tells Google you’re an active business; which means the more social signals you get (i.e., shares of your content) the better your rankings.
b) Publish High Quality Content on Other High Quality Sites. This tactic is most often referred to as guest blogging and it is effective. Guest blogging can be a lot of work, but the good news is that these links are usually high-value backlinks. They aren’t low-quality because you can cherry pick the publications that have a high domain authority and would ultimately be good to showcase your knowledge.
c) Create Something That People Will Share. I know, easier said than done right? But if you’ve done the research to discover topics and questions your audience could be interested in then why not put the answers or information into craveable content such as infographics or downloadable PDFs?
So many bloggers and website owners love to share images.
This is because images are one of the most effective types of content. Since they are visual and don’t take long to absorb, they are highly engaging.
Consequently, readers love to share engaging content and that means backlinks for you.
2. Voice search:
In the year 2018 there is going to be great improvement in searches. According to Forbes;
You should consider your online content in the context of voice search. To boost your search rankings, it’s important that you incorporate natural speech in your content. Consider using a more conversational tone to pick up on the nuances of everyday language.
This only emphasizes the importance of focusing on long-tail keywords, because as search becomes more conversational short head terms are going to become less relevant – and we’ve already started to see this happen.
3. YouTube Video SEO:
Videos and images are a great opportunity for companies to break into search rankings in a way that makes it easier for their customers to find them. According to HubSpot;
Check out this great video that was featured on Social Media Today that walks you through optimizing and ranking your YouTube Videos.
4. Optimizing with AMP:
Optimization of your mobile phones for the better SEO results is necessary.
Speed is an integral part of designing web pages. Data from KISSmetrics shows that “about 40% of people will abandon a web page that takes more than 3 seconds to load.”
AMP achieves its remarkable speeds in two ways. First, it requires web developers to use a narrow set of web technologies to create pages. Most JavaScript is forbidden, which, as we’ve noted before, is a really good way to make web pages load faster. Second, it serves pages from its own servers, at least when you visit an AMP page via a Google search.
One of the easiest ways to get started with AMP is to implement it on a WordPress website. An official plugin is being developed by Automattic/WordPress, and it is frequently being updated on GitHub.
It’s Easy to Install The Official WordPress Plugin
To get started, head over to the amp-wp GitHub page and click the “Download ZIP” button.
You can install this on your WordPress site just as you would any other WordPress plugin.
You will have to validate some markup after the plugin is installed, but it’s not too bad.
AMP is in beta on BigCommerce, which means that you can get it if you contact BigCommerce support and request access for your site. However, you may need help managing your CSS styles and any custom add-ons, which may not automatically translate to AMP. You will most likely need to contact a BigCommerce developer to get it working though.
5. User Experience:
User experience is also an important trend that if you haven’t adopted – you should this year.
Straight from MOZ; When a search engine delivers a page of results to you, it can measure the success of the rankings by observing how you engage with those results. If you click the first link, then immediately hit the back button to try the second link, this indicates that you were not satisfied with the first result. Search engines seek the “long click” – where users click a result without immediately returning to the search page to try again. Taken in aggregate over millions and millions of queries each day, the engines build up a good pool of data to judge the quality of their results.
User Experience or UX is the cornerstone of web design; which has become a conversion science that can make or break an online business. If you are ignoring user experience while designing your website, you’re doing so at your own peril.
Possibly the greatest thing you could do for your site in terms of SEO is to design you site to deliver the best user experience possible. If you follow the guide lines pointed out previously in this article – you should be on the right track, because user experience really is the culmination of getting all of these elements to work together for your user.
For a more detailed explanation on how to design with user experience in mind, click here.
6. Quick answers:
Everyone is looking for a quick answer. Having smart answers for the questions your customers are asking gives you a real chance of capturing some prime Google real estate.
Find questions your audience are asking outside of search engines by checking out sites like Reddit or Quora. These popular forums can provide some really great insight into topics, keywords and questions that your customers are commonly searching for. If people are asking questions on reddit, they’ve probably already searched Google for them.
Do a bit of keyword research to make sure relevant questions get enough search volume to be worth the effort.
The real trick is answering the question using the right structure.
To capture Google’s answer box, there is no specific formula, but there are some steps you can take to give yourself the best chance.
Format and language are essential!
Match the paragraph, or table, and use the logical answer to the query terms in your title/caption/label/section header.
What the example above shows is that you do not have to rank number one in order to have your content appear in Google’s Answer Box.
It also shows you that if your content is structured right, you have the ability to beat huge brands.
In Summary
Working as a professional SEO in Temecula, I’ve come to the conclusion that the consistent change to SEO moving into 2018 is to continue to improve your content delivery. SEO’s who don’t put users first, quality content second in a manner that can be delivered fast and easy on all browser devices and lastly followed by high quality backlinks will find themselves spinning their wheels this year if they’re lucky.
