10 SEO Trends That Will Influence Digital Marketing

As dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing has grown in impor­tance for today’s busi­ness­es, so has the role of search engine opti­miza­tion. SEO plays a huge role in get­ting peo­ple to your web­site, blog post, guest arti­cles and oth­er con­tent assets. And if you don’t play by Google’s rules, you’ll see your web traf­fic plummet.

The most suc­cess­ful mar­keters are on the cut­ting edge of the lat­est algo­rithm changes and best prac­tices so they can make sure their clients’ con­tent is vis­i­ble. Here are the up-and-com­ing SEO trends that 10 Forbes Agency Coun­cil mem­bers believe will impact their work this year.

1. Voice Search

Voice search ser­vices, includ­ing the use of vir­tu­al assis­tants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assis­tant, make rec­om­men­da­tions based on organ­ic search results. Opti­miz­ing key­words as con­ver­sa­tion­al phras­es will lead to long-tail suc­cess. Typ­i­cal­ly only the No. 1 ranked result becomes the rec­om­men­da­tion, and get­ting to the top posi­tion is eas­i­er if you match con­ver­sa­tion­al phras­ing exact­ly. — Tom Kuhr, MomentFeed

2. Video Engagement

Users’ engage­ment with video has been trend­ing upwards fast. Faster inter­net speeds, user-friend­ly social media and smart­phones are help­ing video con­tent grow in pop­u­lar­i­ty. Search engines will rec­og­nize this trend in user behav­ior and reward com­pa­nies that appeal to cur­rent user pref­er­ences. I pre­dict that we’ll see vast improve­ments in video and image recog­ni­tion by search engines. — Ahmad Kareh, Twist­lab Marketing

3. Filtering Out Non-Credible News Articles

With the onslaught of media crit­i­cism, many com­pa­nies have tak­en a beat­ing for allow­ing fake news. Con­tent farms and scam­mers have played the sys­tem and dis­guised them­selves as cred­i­ble. Search giants will fur­ther scru­ti­nize con­tent to pre­vent such errors in the future. Hav­ing a well-writ­ten arti­cle will no longer be enough. It will have to be sup­port­ed by oth­er cred­i­ble sources. — Ricar­do Casas, Fahren­heit Marketing

4. Increased Focus On Structured Snippets

Google’s first pri­or­i­ty used to be to deliv­er infor­ma­tion to searchers as quick­ly as pos­si­ble in the form of search rank­ings. Now Google is deliv­er­ing a tremen­dous amount of infor­ma­tion direct­ly inside the SERPs with cus­tom wid­gets and Struc­tured Snip­pets. If you have top-ranked con­tent rank­ing for high-vol­ume search terms, you may deliv­er that info to the user with­out them ever hit­ting your site. — Todd Saun­ders, AdHawk

5. Google’s Mobile-First Algorithm

SEO prac­ti­tion­ers are final­ly being forced to adjust to the real­i­ty of a mobile-first algo­rithm on Google. Before the update rolls out in July, it’s essen­tial to review mobile rank­ing fac­tors and adjust pri­or­i­ties. Page speed, for exam­ple, has been con­firmed as an offi­cial mobile rank­ing fac­tor, which has reori­ent­ed the way SEOs are pri­or­i­tiz­ing web­site and con­tent updates. — Nina Hale, Nina Hale / Per­for­mance Digital

6. Social Media Searches

Peo­ple are increas­ing­ly using social media plat­forms as search engines, and while search engines are still king, they are increas­ing­ly tran­si­tion­ing into a sec­ondary plat­form. As this trend increas­es, con­tent will need to be opti­mized for social media plat­forms just as much as it is for search engine plat­forms, with the added ben­e­fit of using organ­ic and paid tar­get­ing. — Ste­fan Pol­lack, The Pol­lack PR Mar­ket­ing Group

7. Influencer Marketing And Link Building

Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is on the rise, and in some indus­tries, it’s extreme­ly effec­tive. More than sim­ply cre­at­ing direct con­ver­sions, influ­encer mar­ket­ing can actu­al­ly land many high-lev­el links very quick­ly and effec­tive­ly and help a clien­t’s sites rank bet­ter for their prod­ucts and ser­vices. This is going to be anoth­er way for mar­keters to pro­cure links and increase site author­i­ty as a whole. — Sean Smith, Sim­pleTiger LLC

8. Awareness Campaigns

Adver­tis­ing cam­paigns involv­ing print and tele­vi­sion no longer have the reach they once did. Rather, aware­ness cam­paigns that use blog­ging, vlog­ging and social media have come to the fore­front. Poten­tial cus­tomers will come to asso­ciate your brand, prod­ucts and ser­vices with the mes­sage you con­vey. This can be tricky to exe­cute, but they can also be wild­ly effec­tive. — Jason Hall, FiveChan­nels Marketing

9. Quality Over Quantity

For a long time, SEOs preached that you had to be pro­duc­ing con­tent all the time to enjoy good rank­ings in Google search. There is a place for that (like build­ing brand author­i­ty), but if you’re try­ing to rank for a high­ly com­pet­i­tive phrase, short con­tent is not going to cut it. In 2018, busi­ness­es should be focused on long-form con­tent cou­pled with a sol­id pro­mo­tion strat­e­gy for that con­tent. — Chris Drey­er, Rankings.io

10. Rich Media Content

Short­en your copy and get to the point. The 600-word min­i­mum no longer applies. I would add some rich media (video or graph­ic), as its tru­ly about the con­tent, not how long it is. Cor­rect intent will keep your vis­i­tors con­tent, which will pay off in the long run. — Tom La Vec­chia, MBA, X Fac­tor Media

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