User Experience becomes even more important
In 2018, user experience will be key for your site design and development initiatives. Site speed, readability, and site architecture will be critical to ensuring smooth user experiences and navigation. Having a good user experience for your website ultimately improves user satisfaction and ROI.
ADA moves beyond your physical property
ADA conformity for 2018 is a must-have, not just to avoid legal issues, but to provide access to the 20% of Americans who have a disability. Put ADA on the checklist of items that are “must haves” and ensure that the CMS you deploy will provide some forms of checks to warn you about non-ADA conforming content that your team may be about to publish to your site.
Voice search and position zero
Voice recognition is not new, but 2018 should be a breakout year for the technology with greater accuracy and greater language support. According to the latest stats, one in five mobile search queries come from voice search. Google’s rater’s guide provides clear guidelines on voice search that are focused on four critical elements – length of the content, user satisfaction, grammatical correctness and elocution. When consumers “ask” questions, systems like Google will leverage their vast repository of website data to arrive at answers for consumers. Google’s algorithms are designed to identify the “best” answer for any given question and return it in what is known as “position 0.” 70% of returned voice searches utilize information from Position 0.
To do well in Voice search and secure zero positioning, you must adapt your content – that means having relevant Schema mark ups around content that is most likely to be valuable to a mobile user.
Content marketing and link building
Content will always be king however your link-building and content marketing strategies need to be aligned. The importance of quality citation and trusted links will continue to be strong. Deploy a strategy to build robust citation and links through relationships with vendors or local businesses in your area, sponsorships for charity events, or even getting brand mentions from the top influencers in the vertical.
Create an annual content calendar and identify all major events, conferences etc. in your local area. Work with either your agency or your in-house marketing team to design outreach campaigns with businesses, bloggers, or influencers on your chosen topics. Build relationships, write content about topics or events that are worth sharing on other blogs, social channels or for sharing with news websites to get a link back to the website.
