The world of SEO is ever-changing, specialists must constantly stay ahead of the curve to ensure that their SEO strategies stay current and that their tactic work. Even small changes in trends or direction can impact on the viability of popular approaches, and many veteran SEO experts have witnesses abrupt shifts in the landscape and dealing with the fall-out.
If you want to be in the know and stay ahead of the curve then read up on our list of the current trends and changes in the SEO world, and how they’re impacting search engine optimisation.
The mobile first approach to indexing
Google has introduced some game-changing shifts to the web recently. One such change had been the shift to a mobile-first approach. Google began the migration of sites to mobile-first indexing in 2018. This approach means that the mobile version of websites is indexed and ranked, instead of your desktop version. The world has changed and mobile devices have now well and truly overtaken desktop devices when it comes to traffic.
Your mobile site being the primary one used for ranking means that there is no excuse for not prioritising mobile-friendliness.
With your mobile version being the primary one for ranking, there’s no excuse to procrastinate with mobile friendliness. To get prepared, make sure you’re mobile site speed and user experience are good. It’s a good time to make your mobile site responsive if you haven’t already. If you’re not sure how well your mobile site appears to crawlers then check out some of the tools online that will show you have search engine spiders understand your mobile pages.
Loading times
User experience is a big deal when it comes to search engine optimisation and Google means serious business when it comes to prioritising UX. Speed has been a ranking factor for a long time for desktop, and recently mobile speed has also been introduced as a ranking factor.
The speed score is generated by looking at Chrome’s real user performance database, which shows how your site loads for ache users. It’s obviously hard to understand how your site looks on every users device and control speed for everyone, luckily right now optimisation seems to be key. If you haven’t already it’s important to make sure any issues preventing fast load times are tackled.
Reputation as a ranking signal
One new change is that machine learning algorithms are now able to take into account unlinked brand mentions and begin to build an impression and understanding of your brand as an entity. This ability allows search engines to understand where your brand sits in terms of authority and reputation in a particular topic area. If the search understands that a brand is particularly well trusted or well-reputed on a topic then it is more likely to rank it more highly for relevant search queries. This could be a powerful positive for SEO specialists. Building backlinks is commonly accepted to be a powerful ranking factor, but building them quickly is usually a black hat business. Ensuring you mention your brand as often is now also an effective way to climb the rankings.
These are just a few of the big, impactful trends that can influence your search engine optimisation results in the years to come. Search engines are constantly implementing new updates and tweaks that affect the way rankings are determined, so staying up to date on the latest happenings is essential.
The 2018-2019 trends suggest an increasing focus on mobile devices and creating the best user experience. For most this will represent some adjustments to previous practices, and we can expect more changes to come!