1. Featured Snippets
At an increasing frequency, Google loads quick answers to questions that people put into their search. In order to get to the top, companies need to offer bite-sized content that is easy to snip and paste fully. Lists and Q&A are great ways to help achieve this goal.
2. Voice Search
The rising accessibility of voice search in all kinds of contexts is changing the way that businesses need to structure their keywords. Voice search may well become the dominant mode in 2018, which brings a need to focus more on long-tail keywords and natural language. Bringing in latent semantic indexing is a good strategy here, as well.
3. Mobile Optimization
With more than half of searches happening on mobile devices, mobile optimization of sites needs to happen yesterday. We already know that mobile search turns up different results than searches on other devices. Companies building mobile-first content should emphasize local SEO, as well as content and pages that are mobile-friendly.
4. User Experience
People using mobile to look for information expect it to load at a quick clip. SEO best practices must include an effort to make the user experience both faster and easier to navigate. The increase in the acceptance of AMP indicates that this is not likely to go away.
5. Structured Data
Do you know what your search result looks like on the SERP? It’s time to give it a facelift. Adding structured data in the HTML for your pages allows you to improve the appearance of your search results, with more information and visual cues for readers.
Is 2018 the year that Google launches its Mobile-First Index? Who knows. But with these tips, you’ll already be ahead of the game.