Strong search engine optimization is one of the key ways to draw traffic to your website and small business. Hiring SEO services to help build up your business is a start, but being on top of trends can help you get ahead and stay ahead of your competitors! Here are eight of the hottest SEO trends of 2018 to help put your small business and website on the digital map.

1. Mobile Website Design: With so many people accessing content on smartphones, a good mobile platform is more important than ever. 48% of users say a poorly-designed mobile website shows that the business “simply doesn’t care enough.”
2. Social Media Engagement: Having a strong social media presence and a high degree of engagement is essential to reaching your audience.
3. Long-form Content: SEO services that can provide more long-form content are better positioned to make sure that you’re keeping your visitors on your site longer.
4. Site Speed: Google has officially announced that site speed now affects your rankings, so make sure that your site is running as smoothly as possible.
5. Video and Visual Content: Users today are more visually focused than ever. Online content video views are now exceeding 50 billion views each month!
6. Voice Search: The way people search online is changing with the increasing use of voice recognition technology; make sure that your site is optimized for this new way users are finding content.
7. “Hey, Alexa:” Having your meta description provide concise and accurate information allows for services like Alexa, Siri, and Google Home to reference your website for information.
8. Optimizing for Intent: While not an entirely new trend, 2018 saw algorithms focusing more on the user intent, with phrases like “cheap” or “for sale” returning more e-commerce results, for example.

With all the advances and changes to algorithms in the past year, 2019 is sure to be an interesting and eventful year for SEO! While it is difficult to guarantee the developments we’ll see in the near future, expect these trends to continue into next year and beyond.

Looking for SEO services to help your small business grow? Contact MRN Web Designs for all your site design needs, SEO help, and more!