Upcoming SEO Practices for On Page and Off Page Optimization

For most SEO is just about submitting links to the search engine directory, creating backlinks and having a sitemap. We never tend to go beyond this because it never concerns us.

But the upcoming year, 2018 has a lot in store for the technological revolution. It requires us to change the way we look at SEO and how we treat SEO. In this article, we shall see the latest SEO strategies for on-page and off-page optimization that must be adopted for the future.

But before that, let us understand the Difference Between On Page And Off Page Optimization.

On the page optimization consists of all techniques that are concerned with the pages of the website. Off the page optimization consists of all techniques that are concerned with external linkages. But, the aim remains the same for both the practices, to gain higher ranks in the Search Engine Results (SERPs).

Before you can totally comprehend, what it takes to rank high on Google’s SERPs, you need to educate yourself about what has changed and what needs to be improved. This would clarify what are Google’s intentions, besides its core goal of bringing the maximum relevant search results in the fastest way possible. Google has been striving to reach the zenith of perfection. It has, thereby, eliminated all other search engines from the race. Besides this, it has become a household name along the way.

Best SEO Practices

SEO is the mind of Google so it is very important to read its mind. There are two ways how Google’s mind works. And is they are mastered, everything else is mastered.

On-Page Practices

1. AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): Considering the fact that most of the online traffic comes from mobile devices, Google has incorporated the valuation of AMP feature in SERPs. AMP is an open source initiative by Google to enable fast rendering and loading of content on mobile devices. Google AMP is becoming interestingly popular as more than 80% of global online audience accesses the internet through mobile devices i.e. smartphones, iPads, tablets etc. and so SEO Marketing experts need to keep an eye on the AMP test results for the pages of the sites they look after.
2. Updated Content: Google measures all of your contents for freshness and then scores them according to the type of search query. The algorithms keep monitoring the web for search queries such as ‘best xyz device’, ‘cheapest xyz in abc’, ‘under xyz phones’, ‘latest news’, ‘trending in fashion’, etc. The website must be updated from time to time, by creating a more useful content on existing pages, removing unnecessary advertisements and creating new pages that can answer fresh search queries. As an SEO expert, you must focus on having an entirely new freshness quotient for your website that ranks it up in the SERPs.
3. Rich Answer Optimization: Out of the billions of searches performed on Google every day, only 19.45% appear in the rich answer snippets. The percentage may not be as high today, but in the future, it would also become competitive as it directly attracts user’s attention. Since Google has made its intention of giving value to rich answers, because they deliver the most relevant information to the search query without requiring to click on the website URL, SEO experts must optimize the website content for rich answers of relevant search queries.
4. Improved User Engagement: As a smarter approach towards the future, Google makes a considerable number of intuitions about a given site through the user engagement metrics. It includes the actions performed by the user, bouncing rate, average time on the site, pogo sticking and much more. It has an indirect effect on the rankings of SERPs as your visibility and CTR (Click Through Rate) increases significantly.In 2018, user engagement will be a great factor to improve site’s rankings and hence, a great practice for search engine optimization.
5. Quick Page Loading: Earlier in 2017, Google officially announced that page speed will be a ranking factor in its mobile-first index. And now it is quite evident that 2018 will favor websites that are fast and accessible. This can be achieved by enabling compression, minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, reducing redirects and optimizing images. Google’s Page Speed Test can be a helpful tool for SEO experts to keep a check on this in the coming year.
6. Short and Keyword Rich URLs: Google has stated that the first 3-5 words in a URL are given more weight in SERPs. As a good practice for the coming year, including the targeted keyword in your URL, keeping them short and sweet. You may practice sprinkling LSI keywords in the content for enhancing the relevancy of the page, but don’t overdo it. Your URL will do it.
7. Simpler Interlinking With Sitemaps: The coming year will also show how sitemaps are essential for website ranking. Basically, interlinks were a great help to search engine crawlers for indexing purposes. In the coming year, Google will look for sitemaps that have all URLs of a particular site so that it doesn’t has trouble in indexing them. So, the future of SEO belongs to sitemaps, replacing the ugliness that interlinks created on sites.

Off-Page Optimization

All the practices that concern the relationship of your website with other websites, come under the umbrella of off page optimization. It includes link building, but it is not restricted to link building.

The off-page optimization practices for 2018 are a level up, targeting more actions and traffic to your website.

1. Content Marketing: This is a small thing that has the capacity to bring about big changes. After having produced high-quality content on your sites, 2018 will bring in the need to market the content on highly-trafficked destinations of the web such as Quora, Reddit, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest, besides Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. It is one of the most significant and effective SEO practices to be put to use this year. It would engage a lot of people with your site and take you up in SERPs.
2. Quality Backlinks: There is no doubt that Google measures the number of backlinks to your content and views them as the number of votes received in an election, but it values them more if they have quality added to them. In other words, if the backlinks provide the visitors what they are looking for while they land you your website,it will make a difference to your ranking in SERPs. As an SEO expert, you not only need to bring more links to your domain but also need to earn them from trustworthy and authoritative websites.
3. Security Is Priority: In the coming year, https (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) will be a ranking factor. Websites that use https over HTTP will have an added advantage in SERPs, as it will keep the information safe from hackers. Google has although not announced it officially, but the search engines prefer secure websites. As a good SEO practice, all websites must switch from HTTP to https, otherwise, the coming year may bring in penalties.
4. Product Reviews And Client Testimonials: Since Google has shifted its working to machine learning, it reaches out to unique reviews about products and services, as a measure of a good brand, hence a good website. It is certainly going to play a big role in the coming days as it reflects that trust users have on your website and certainly, pull up the rankings in SERPs.
5. Viral Link Baits: This is not a new term but an unpopular term in the world of SEO. Link Bait is a viral content with the specific aim to attract links from the users who visit the website and find the content convincing enough to be shared with the rest of the world. Besides fetching organic traffic, viral linkbait are critical to raising rankings in search engine algorithms as shares by users are high-quality outbound links. You can do so by appointing a team for brainstorming and encouraging ideas for virality. SEO practices that are centered around creating viral linkbait will earn more in SERPs at least span of time.

Conclusion

SEO is like a labyrinth – the more try to solve it, the more you get lost in it. You have a checklist of your primary SEO practices for the coming year but you must keep educating yourself about the changes that take place.

Remember, Google loves you when everyone else loves you. And everyone else will love you when Google loves you. After all, Google has become a household name along the way.