5 new trends developing in SEO this year

5 new trends developing in SEO this year

SEO is constantly changing and although some ranking remains more or less unchanged over the years (like the need for quality backlinks) other constantly change and evolve and what was a positive SEO implementation today, might be a grey area or even considered a black-hat technique tomorrow. 

This is why I spend a huge amount of time just getting up to speed with Google updates, search engine trends and the overall evolution of the SEO industry. 

2017 until now was nothing out of the ordinary, we haven't got any big and spectacular Google update and so far no game changer either, but a few SEO trends emerge and I think we should all keep in eye on them in 2018.

Here are 5 new SEO trends that are becoming the way to important to ignore: 

1.Mobile search has become the norm and the primary way to search anything.

When I was "mobile" I'm not really referring to smartphones + tablets, I'm only referring to smartphones! Smartphones had taken over and this is now the most popular way searches are being made and everything is growing faster than expected. 

Google promised us a mobile-first search index in 2018, this is a clear indicator that starting with that Google update everything in SEO will from that point on be mobile orientated. 

Google data shows the following statistics:

• 92% of young adults in the US own a smartphone
  
• 77% of all adults in the US have and use a smartphone
  
• 93% of all adults with an income of 75k+ own a smartphone
  
• More searches are now being made from smartphones compared with computers
  
• 40% of people use the smartphone to make multiple searches each day
  
• Industries that saw a 35%+ increase on mobile searches this year: home&garder, auto, apparel, finance, beauty. 
  

2. Overall website quality becomes more important than content.

We all know that Google cares about the quality its servers to its users. This means Google will always try to find the best result out there and deliver that to users and there is no better indicator of a website being good than other people engaging and liking a specific website.

In other words, the "content is king" saying is becoming kind of false. Content is still important but this had gotten way more complicated with a few new different factors. The simple idea is this: Google cares about positive popular websites and how much traction they get if this checks out  Google will rank you accordingly since it will value your website's quality. 

3. Complete, engaging and in-depth type content will get you good ranks. 

We already know that Google values high-quality content. But what does that even mean in 2017?

Giving the fact that in some niches the top three results in Google are almost 50% bigger than the other 20 following results this tells me that Google is putting a lot of importance on complete content. Keep in mind this is not about long content, you don't need to bore your users to death creating long content, you just need to provide the complete subject, everything the user may ever need on one page so that no additional searches should be done on that specific issues. 

4. Local search is becoming more important.

Because everyone with a smartphone is dependent on Google for providing relevant information, it only makes sense for the importance of local search to grow. Why? Because people tend to search to fix everyday problems and this often involved local results. 

Over 70% of all food and beverage are now made from mobile and such searches increased by 40% last year. 

Searches that include "near me" had become the norm, this is present in most languages. 

So depending on your niche, we may want to focus on local search as well as develop your whole marketing strategy around local search! 

5. Basic SEO is dead. 

Yeah, we heard me right! The traditional way of doing SEO is gone. It used to be very simple to implement SEO practices, all the websites got the same kind treatment and nobody disputed the rules. Now we are starting to witness a clear shift from the traditional SEO practices. It may act like a foundation but what you build on top needs to be custom adapted to the niche and website you are doing SEO for.