By: Jacob Hanson
I love working in the education industry because educators and the members of our client family have a deep desire and passion to help kids learn. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that? I also love working in the marketing industry, and I’ve had the opportunity to connect with marketing and PR professionals who are driven, smart, and open to swapping ideas to best help our clients.
Part of this connection has come from being a member of the Forbes Agency Council. Recently, I was one of a dozen executives from PR and marketing firms who came together to share the 12 SEO trends impacting them in 2018. My contribution was about the power of social media, which we have certainly written about before. Here are some insightful quotes from other Council members about what I see as the five factors affecting SEO right now.
“Voice search will change how we create content. Valuable content will have a more conversational tone that answers questions directly. The idea of creating content around a specific keyword bucket will no longer exist. It's about creating content for searcher intent. Search engines can interpret context so that content that answers a question and contains information about a topic will win.” —Loren Baker, Foundation Digital
“In 2018, engagement will play an even larger role in achieving SEO success overall. Creating link-worthy, user-driven content that answers relevant questions and provides useful information to prospects is pivotal. Schema is another area that will continue to be a focal point in achieving measurable results within organic search online.” —Bryan Shetsky, Lamark Media
“We are writing more long-form content in 2018. Content pages of 1,500 words or more are performing better in the search engine rankings and drawing more organic traffic than shorter pages. Studies show that users stay on these pages longer and long-form content receives more backlinks and social shares. Focusing on evergreen topics and high-quality writing is key to success.” — Peter Boyd, PaperStreet Web Design
“A couple of years ago, Google announced that secured website certificates (SSL) were starting to impact the ranking of websites. Recently, we noticed that browsers such as Chrome are flagging sites that don't begin with HTTPS as being potentially unsafe. At $39/year, this is one of the least expensive and easiest fixes to boost SEO ranking in 2018.” — Ahmad Kareh, Twistlab Marketing
“A study done by Cisco last year predicted that by 2021, video will account for over 82% of all consumer internet traffic. That means in the next few years, video content will by far surpass all forms of other content. On top of that, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. The massive opportunity to get your brand in front of your prospects is creating optimized video content.” — Marc Hardgrove, The HOTH
Find More SEO Tips in our Inbound Playbook for the Education Marketplace
“The change from a desktop-based to a mobile-based Google index is imminent, requiring responsive design or better alignment between content on mobile and desktop sites. Google officially announced that page speed is a ranking factor for mobile results, making its AMP technology more appealing. Lastly, Progressive Web Apps will have greater support on iPhones, impacting mobile design trends.” —Paul Shapiro, Catalyst, a GroupM and WPP Agency
As everyone in edtech prepares for the busy back-to-school season, we would do well to keep these ideas in mind as we continually refine our content and design to maximize the number (and quality) of eyeballs we attract to everything we share online.
Thanks for sharing!
Comments (1)