How to Rule SEO in 2018

Happy New Year from PX Media! We hope 2018 is going well for you and your business so far this year. Experts are saying it should be a banner year for businesses that stay smart and evolve their strategies when it comes to how they present themselves online. It's an exciting new day in the world of SEO and we’re glad to have your attention.

While each New Year brings a brand new set of criteria to match when it comes to modern businesses and SEO, the good news is the fundamentals of SEO remain the same. So experience is key when it comes to SEO strategy and fundamentals. Unfortunately, SEO success in 2018 is not something you can dabble in to see real results. In the long run, working with an experienced, honest, and affordable team to manage your site marketing can save you both time and money – not to mention the confusing and frustrating side effects that come from doing your SEO solo.

In essence, what worked in 2017 will work with the same efficiency in 2018. Everyone knows the benchmark for ranking high on search engines is a strategic diet of keyword choices, credible backlinks, online authority, well-planned social media, and targeted paid advertising. Today, for instance, you can expect something called “scaling measures” in order for your business to dominate search engine results. Through testing, you can adapt and revamp your ad buy/presence in real time according to desired results. Along with scaling, indexing, backlinking, keyword targeting, and other proven SEO strategies continue to stay formidable players in 2018.

Below are a few nuggets of SEO advice we at PX Media offer standard to all our new clients. We hope to help improve your ranking in 2018. Enjoy and good luck.

2018 SEO Techniques & Rules

Establish Content Authority

Authority is how well your website content is considered a trusted business "source" among other well-established websites in your genre. Authority can be equated to how many websites have used a page URL from your website as a business reference (be it a link on another website's resources section or a link-back through an article pulled from your company's website). You can find your own website's domain authority through tools like SMERush and MozBar. Raising a company's authority through content and SEO strategy can bring results within just a few months.

Be Fast or Be Gone

The standard website should take no more than a few seconds to load. Slow, sluggish, dated, error-ridden websites are not going to fair too well in 2018. Companies can instantly enhance the speed of their website by reducing the server response time, caching pages as well as minifying and combining CSS and JavaScript can drastically reduce the size of each page. If your host is not enabling compression like GZIP you should look for another host. Reducing the size (MBs) of images on your site using tools for image optimization is equally effective in increasing website speed. All should be used as well as many configurations on how browsers handle your code.

Use Both CDN and DNS Wherever Possible

Using content-deliver networks (CDNs) like Amazon's CloudFront is crucial to having the ability to quickly serve your content to users, no matter where they are in the world. CDNs help companies unfold their content across multiple servers across the globe through what is called a mirroring technique. Mirroring manages all content on all servers – no matter their physical location. In addition, companies can think about pointing their domain name server (DNS) to a company like Cloudflare or Sucuri (Our Favorite) that offers CDN, DNS, DDoS protection, and security firewall – all in one convenient package. Sucuri can even keep your site working during a server crash.

Ensure Your Site Is Error Free – Front to Back

It’s what you cannot see on your website that can negatively affect your site ranking. We’re not talking about the traditional errors such as typos, 404’s and broken links. We’re talking about critical backend errors only visible by using specialized tools such as Google Webmaster. If you did everything mentioned in this article and decided to skip this one step, your site ranking with Google would be almost nonexistent. There are two sides to clean, high-ranking SEO performance. Make sure your site is running at 100% efficiency on the backend, as well as on the front.

Content. Content. Content.

The impact of content has emerged throughout the years and it’s not surprising that 2018 will call for even more targeted content generation from businesses online. Content adds value to the website. Today, lackluster content and content "spinning" is frowned upon by search engines, so engaging customers with interactive content will have a major impact on website rankings in 2018.

There are no shortcuts for creating informative, engaging content. Your words and pictures need to establish trust and maintain a level of freshness. The ability for Google to sniff out shoddy content is improving every month, which means your content also needs to be updated on regular basis, thus helping to improve site rankings. One of the latest content strategies is increasing article word counts to over 2,000. As well, healthy internal and external links, the solid user of footnotes, sources, statistics, and referenced studies within your content will build authority and trust among potential clients. Relevant keywords and the ability to develop useful, source-rich content wins for online companies in 2018.

Responsiveness. Responsiveness. Responsiveness.

Mobile searches are outpacing desktop searches nowadays, especially in mobile responsiveness and overall value. According to Search Engine Land, the online authority on all things SEO and more, out of total searches made in the year 2016, 60% were carried out through mobile devices. The creation and implementation of a solid CSS library on all platforms can ensure your company's website looks good and performs at optimum levels on all screens. Do you know if your site passes the mobile-friendly test? Google now ranks non-responsive sites lower.

Enhance User Experience (EUE)

At the end of the day, it's pretty simple: Develop a site that is user-friendly and interesting to read. A laundry list for enhancing user experience on your company website is as follows: utilizing breadcrumbs for navigation; implementing fast-site search; avoiding the use of too many site graphics; ensuring your menu bar is easy to navigate; adopting tags for providing categories to your content, and installing pop-ups wherever necessary. Done right and you’ll see improvements in weeks. Done wrong and well, "the abyss."

Build Solid Links

Creating quality links is key to high rankings, especially those links that you use on your site from other sources. Outbound links are vital. Be sure to make every page of content redirects the users to an outbound link. Even better, try using organic backlinks to rank higher and quicker. Be sure the source DA score is good. A toxic link to your site will get you a penalty.

Don't Go Ad Crazy

The extensive use of online advertising will annoy your users. Make sure you follow the strict rules for creating online advertisements and be sure not to distract the attention of the users away from your own site content.

In 2018, It's All About LSI

One of the most sought-after and important SEO techniques is diversifying keywords using a process called latent-semantic indexing techniques (LSI). LSI is a concept that search engines like Google use to discover how a term (single word) and content work together to mean the same thing (Google now knows when you use a synonym for a word of the same meaning). By using Google-approved LSI keywords, you are able to appease the beast and get your content to rank higher and with more authority.

In 2018, you can expect millions of users on social media, which means your SEO strategy has to be improved to meet the requirements of your specific segment of these millions of users. Your message needs to be targeted and your voice trusted. Creating viral content for social networking can be a very effective marketing tool, as well as audio bites, videos, and podcasts. It’s all in an effort to get people talking about your company and coming back for more of what separates your business from the rest of the pack.

With that – let's get optimizing your website for 2018 in a fast, clean, and high-ranking fashion.

Distributed by PX Media

Media Contact

Company Name: PX Media
Contact Person: Douglas
Email: douglas@pxmediainc.com
Phone: (626) 390-1082
City: Pasadena
State: CA
Website: www.pxmediainc.com

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