Gone are the times when traditional marketing was the main medium used to attract new customers. As radio, newspapers and even television fail to reach wider audiences due to the rise of technology, businesses have had to try and keep up with the market. With almost everything available at a swipe of a finger, businesses have had to conquer the digital sphere to get their messages across.
To avoid the user swiping left, businesses along with television fail of a white label digital marketing agency Gold Coast have been able to engage users and reach even more potential customers. However, as technology evolves, search engines such as Google are trying to come up with avenues to assist businesses to get as much exposure to their target audience. Here are some of this year’s trends that have had an enormous impact on how websites are developed, designed and how they improve a user’s experience
Mobile First Index
This year, Google finally revealed its Mobile First Index after two years of trials. Before, mobile search results were the same as desktop results and this change was first pushed because more users were accessing the internet via their mobile devices. Now that the number of people accessing the internet with their mobiles has surpassed that of desktops on a global scale, so mobile user-friendly websites have become important. This means that priority has now been given to mobile devices and websites that are optimized for such devices will rank well in organic search rankings.
In March 2018, Google started to migrate websites that follow the best mobile practices to the mobile-first index. Companies that did not want to be left behind had to optimize their websites to help gain favorable rankings and have a leg up on the competition. Webmasters were notified of the migration to fully prepare.
Loading speeds
A mobile website that loads slowly not only bleeds users who might be accessing it on the go, but Google also has an algorithm that penalizes sites. This comes after an analysis from the search engine website that found that a clear majority of sites they analyzed were slow to completely load. The ranking of the page will be lower, and this can also cost a loss of potential customers and revenue if users must wait for a page to completely load.
A mobile website that loads fast increases the likelihood of users remaining for longer and browsing a bit more, and it increases overall user experience. Google introduced an open source project that gave mobile websites the ability to load web pages four times faster than normal as uses even fewer data to do so. They also have an open source initiative named Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) that helps create fast and high performing on all mobile devices. AMP assist in the reduction of bounce rate which helps with the overall ranking.
Rank Brain
RankBrain is this year’s most important breakthroughs that will change the outlook when it comes to SEO and digital marketing. RankBrain is Google’s algorithm and it uses artificial intelligence capability to rank websites accordingly. Google will be able to analyze the data across websites to try and understand the intent of the user which affects how it will manage image and voice searches rather than rely on the search history. This will allow Google to better understand what search results to aid a user.
The most important aspect to keep in mind and stay inline with rank Brain is the Dwell Time. This refers to how long a user remains on the website page. This is also Click-Through which is how often a user gains access to the website through Google. A Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of users who land on your website and exit it without clicking any other links and browsing. To stay in the green, optimize titles, descriptions, and content to get the clicks to your website. This will help boost your search engine ranking and remain on friendly terms with RankBrain.
Link building
When it comes to the search engine results pages (SERP), link building and creating a backlink is still important. This assists Google to understand that a website can be trusted, and all relevant information found in it will help the user. And this year, instead of adding links from popular websites to attract more traffic, using a lesser-known one that is still relevant to your business will also work well to boost the search rankings. Websites also tended to focus more on adding quality links that are trusted rather than adding multiple links from different websites that vary in relevance to your own site.
Images
Having images and videos on your website has become one of the biggest digital marketing trends of the year. Not only does including them increase the likelihood of piquing the interest of a user but to also engage them so they can browse your website longer. And because a user can now access an image on Google without visiting the site it’s on, focusing on images and using them to express a message is important. Even other image orientated sites such as Pinterest and Bing have been working to improve their visual search engines.
Voice search
As the usage of voice search increases, businesses will have to start optimizing their websites for voice and conversational search. This is seen as the future as by 2020, it is likely that 50% of searches on search engine results will be voice searches. This will put pressure on web developers to try and stay ahead of the trend by ensuring that their content is optimized for voice searches with the help of long-tail keywords and is able to address likely requests from users. A digital marketing agency will be able to assist the marketing of your business from the ground up and able to come up with ideas and strategies that will better serve your business, so it can develop into a powerful brand. Keeping ahead of the digital marketing trends will see your business sprint ahead of your competitors and open your services to a wider audience.
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