What are your goals for 2018?

Grow your business revenue?

Get more followers?

Make more, work less?

SEO will help you achieve all of these goals, so making great SEO part of your tactical strategy is key to making those dreams a reality.

But, so many people ignore SEO because all they know about it is that it changes all the time. And yes, it does change, but it also stays the same. Today we’re going over major trend changes for 2018, but also emphasizing what hasn’t changed. #themoreyouknow

How to use this post:

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by SEO—take heart. You’re not alone, and we’re here to help you through it. If you’re new to SEO, read the 2018 trends part lightly, then really etch the ‘what hasn’t changed’ part into your mind. And always remember, good SEO is good business. So if you’re making your website and content useful, helpful and not spammy, then you’re already on your way to great SEO.

Ok, let’s dive in!

SEO Trends in 2018

Focus On: Time Spent on Page

How often do you check your Google Analytics (you have those set up, right? It’s super helpful, easy, and important, and here’s how to do it)?

One of the biggest things you should pay attention to in 2018 ius time spent on page. If someone is reading your content, then there’s a good chance that they find it relevant, helpful, and that it’s just what they wanted when they clicked your link in Google.

(This is called “dwell time” in SEO speak, btw)

There’s a high correlation between long dwell time and high rankings. The average time spent on page (dwell time) for websites that get ranked in the top 10 is 3:10. That’s a long time! The internet has a short attention span, so staying on a page for over 3 minutes is a big deal.

How do you increase engagement on a page?

Well, remember when we said that good SEO is good business? The answer to this question is a perfect example of that.

Write content that your audience wants to read. Make it in-depth (more than 1500 words is considered thorough over 2000 is considered very in-depth). Use graphics, resources, and links to other sites to make it helpful and useful. Write great content for your audience, and you’ll be on your way to great SEO.

Even Higher Focus on Mobile Performance

60% of Google searches come from mobile devices, and in 2018 it’s expected that Google is going to switch over to “mobile first indexing”.

What does this mean?

That Google will value the performance of your mobile site over anything else. (Reminder, performance means how easy and pleasant your site is to use. Think loading speed, how much you have to pinch and zoom vs scroll etc.).

If you don’t have a mobile site set up yet, then Google will rank your competitors over you, all things being equal. Of course, all other things are never equal, but Google wants to prioritize websites that give people a great experience, so your site should do that.

Want to know what Google thinks of the mobile friendliness of your website? Use this link to test it.

Rich Snippets will become even more prominent

You may not know the term “rich snippet” but you’ve certainly seen them around the internet. When you search something like “What’s the weather today” you’ll get a box with the weather on it, plus a page full of weather-related links.

This helpful box is called a “rich snippet”. They exist for all kinds of categories, like stocks, recipes, step-by-step how-tos, celebrity information, and so on.

When I type “Lisa Kudrow age” this shows up:

It’s the kind of result that means you don’t even have to click on any link to get the answer you’re looking for (which makes lots of marketers really frustrated–because their content shows up as the top result, but they don’t get the traffic from it).

So why would you want to get into these rich snippets?

Because research shows that these kinds of results get 30% more clicks than standard links. And that traffic is usually gold because people know exactly what they’re getting. Which means they stay around longer, giving you extra long dwell times, and thus increase your SEO. See how it’s all a big reinforcement loop?

Here’s how to get it:

Ok, this is going to seem really overwhelming…but stay with us here. There’s a super handy step-by-step article that shows you how to set up your code to do this. And I promise—it’s easy and you can do this. The article walks you through all the steps and tells you where to put the code so you can set it up properly. Start reading at the section where it says, “How to Implement Structured Data Markup”.

What hasn’t changed in 2018

Content is still your Biggest SEO Asset

Are you seeing a trend here in what the ‘trends’ are? It’s that the words on your website matter. To rank your site Google needs something to read, which means you have to write. And that Google bot is a fast reader, so it likes to see updated content. This means new blog posts.

When you have a new blog post, this does 2 things:

• It builds your library of content, giving Google more to read, and more words to associate with your site. It’s like seasoning in a soup. A brand new website is super bland, because it doesn’t have much content. But the more seasoning you add to your soup, the more you taste flavors like garlic, cumin, chili, etc. The more you write about your ideal topics, the more Google associates your site with them. That’s why we write about SEO, because we want Google to know that we’re an SEO company, and want to rank highly for SEO related search terms.
• It tells Google that your site is updated, and thus more likely to be relevant. Compare this to fashion. Are you likely to purchase from a clothing store that hasn’t gotten any new items in the past 6 months? Probably not. It’s not interesting anymore because you’ve seen everything that store has to offer, and there’s a good chance those items aren’t seasonally appropriate or stylish anymore. Compare this to fast-fashion stores that get new items every single day (and have the sales to support it). You certainly don’t need to blog every day to be relevant, but you do need to be consistent.

How to improve it:

• Create an editorial calendar and stick to it

Did you know that we offer content writing services? We’ll create an editorial calendar for you and write content on a weekly or monthly basis based on your keyword strategy. This is perfect for you if you want to get great SEO but don’t have the time to write the kind of content you need to get it.

• Write, write, and write.

If you decide to write content yourself, rather than hire a writer, the best thing you can do is write consistently. Consider this: if it takes you 4 hours/week to write an article, and you end up getting 1 new client/month because of the SEO boost it would give you…would it be worth it? Give yourself an SEO content boost challenge, and see how it impacts your SEO and bottom line. If it improves your bottom line, then keep it up. If it doesn’t either give it more time, adapt your strategy, or focus on other metrics. But our strong guess is that consistent content will drive business for you.

Backlinks are SEO currency

Remember when we talked about how backlinks are like People Magazine? Backlinks are like votes of popularity on the internet. The more you have, the more “popular” you are, and thus more likely to have a website that people want to read.

Google notices these backlinks to your site and takes them very seriously for your rankings.

How to get great backlinks:

• Guest posting (too busy to pitch? Write up a great post then hire a VA to do the research and applying for you. It’ll be worth your time!)
• Follow the tips in this article

Backlinks matter, and are an important part of your SEO, marketing, and PR strategy. If all you do in 2018 is consistently write content and create strategies for getting backlinks, then you’ll have super solid SEO by the end of this year. And we are certain that will impact your business because we’ve seen ourselves that SEO works.

Questions?

Do you have questions about how SEO works? Are you curious about how it’s changing in 2018? Let us know your wins and worries about SEO. We’re cheering you on!

Xo,
Clapping Dog Media Team

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Here is a quick quiz for you:

Which is more important:

1. The speed of your site?
2. Or the proportions of the flat lay image on the homepage?

(Hint: the answer has to do with images, but not how pretty they are)

What if your site loads fast on your computer but the mobile version is slow, is that OK?

Does any of this affect your readers? Or what about Google? Do search engines care? You just might be surprised, so read on, friends.

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Users Want a Fast Site

We all know that people are impatient– impatient in traffic, impatient on hold, impatient waiting for sites to load… totally impatient. The researchers over at Akamai and Gomez have figured out precisely how impatient we are when it comes to site loading time and page performance. Check out the stats.

•  half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less  AND that web users tend to leave a site if it isn’t fully loaded within 3 seconds
• 79% of online shoppers who have problems (like a slow checkout page, or a delay when advancing from the cart to the payment screen) will never come back to that store!

Just to make this super clear: the research says that you are losing visitors and potential paying customers if your site is slow. That is lots of money you’re losing just from a slow site.

Let’s fix it!

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Google Wants a Fast Site

Page speed also really matters to Google. Nearly 7 years ago Google declared that Page speed was a top ranking factor. Google is focused on delivering the best user experience as possible for their users, and since users care about page speed, so does Google.

A speedy site creates an amazing user experience. Think about it: If you are teasing your readers with decadent photography but the post takes so long to load – that means 2 seconds or longer – they will bail on the site before getting the recipe – and research proves that they won’t come back.

Or perhaps you make money from advertising on your content, a visitor is more likely to visit multiple pages if your site is quick. You will have more clicks the faster your site is. More clicks = more revenue.

Page speed is dependant on a number of different factors– some of the biggest causes of slow sites are:

• Heavy images
• Cheap web hosting
• Too many ads
• Too many widgets
• Embedded media

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Is your site slow? How can you figure out how fast your page is?

Take heart, friends! You can find out the answer quickly and easily (and for free!)

There are a few simple and free tools to help you figure out your page performance. Here’s one of our favorites:

PageSpeed Insights

This amazing free tool, built by Google, gives insights on the speed of both mobile and desktop versions of your site.

One thing that’s a bit tricky about PageSpeed Insights is that the recommendations can get technical, and some of the suggestions may require you to install a plugin or do some more advanced stuff. However, since this is Google’s Page Speed test, we must pay attention to it!

Another tool that we really like is called Pingdom. Pingdom shows you which files are slowing down the site. It also compares your site to other tested sites so you can get a feel how you rate to other sites.

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Image Optimization

How did your site fare with these tests? Was it a bit slow?

If it was, chances are the images are to blame. Lifestyle bloggers average 7-9 images per blog post and while they are all staged beautifully, they are not necessarily optimized well for speed.

These images really have an impact on your page performance and will cause Google to push your site down on the search engine results page.

Now. We hear you thinking:

“Um, there is no way I can optimize and re-upload ALL OF THOSE IMAGES ON MY BLOG. It would take months!”

Don’t worry, you don’t have to! You don’t even have to touch any individual image to get your site running smoothly. WP Smush is the industry standard image optimization plugin that will allow you to optimize all of the images in your media gallery at once (or individually) to increase your site speed.

WP Smush

WP Smush makes it easy to keep the resolution you need without killing your website load times. It even has an option to keep the EXIF data within each image for photographers. The plugin will reduce the size of the images without losing the resolution required for exquisite food photography sites. WP Smush has nearly 500K downloads and is the clear choice for reducing the size of images without giving up quality. Give it a try and let us know how much it speeds up your site!

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xo[/fusion_text][fusion_separator style_type=”none” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” sep_color=”#ffffff” top_margin=”18″ bottom_margin=”18″ border_size=”” icon=”” icon_circle=”” icon_circle_color=”” width=”” alignment=”center” /][fusion_text]

About Meg

Meg Clarke is the owner of Clapping Dog Media where she is a master at the art of influencing natural search results for her creative clients.

Follow her on insta at www.instagram.com/clappingdogmedia or her site at www.clappingdogmedia.com

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If you are a creative entrepreneur, you are smack in the middle of Pre-Launch Season. 

This means in addition to creating a magical holiday season for your friends + fam you are meticulously planning out launch sequences, funnels, and webinars. Next year promises to be a big one and you have products, services and courses to launch + sell.

As you do AllTheThings no doubt you are blogging and capturing the emails of the readers with a super fancy popup created in either LeadPages or SumoMe, right?

That is what we are going to talk about.

The pop up. The welcome mat. The email capture. Those nasty intrusive interstitials.

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(Do you need someone to make SEO Simple? Check out this page or just give me a shout here.)

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In this post I am going to cover:

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the new intrusive interstitial penalty that is coming January 2017

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Exactly what types of pop ups will be penalized

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Step-by-Step ways to protect yourself if you have LeadPages and SumoMe

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Last August Google announced that they want to help users access content more easily on mobile devices, so they are going to begin to penalize sites that have pop ups on mobile sites. And by penalize, they mean they will push sites down to a lower rank on the search results page.

This is what Google Webmaster’s Blog said:

Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller. To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.

Here are some examples of techniques that make content less accessible to a user:

• Showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results, or while they are looking through the page.
• Displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
• Using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.

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We get this right? Pop ups can be annoying especially on our phones when we are trying to read. I hardly EVER subscribe to any list on my phone? Do you? Plus they slow me down. I do just want to get to the article or the address or the phone number or to the content of what I want. Here are two examples that I found that are super annoying on mobile devices and the sorts of things that Google is targeting.

When you go to Forbes.com either on your phone or desktop you see this.

A Quote of the Day and an AD. On the desktop it is a pop up, but on a phone it basically takes over the whole screen.

That is a terrible user experience, when the user is expecting forbes.com they don’t want a quote.

And now check out Kate Spade, imagine THIS on your phone. It is the biggest pop up of all time.

Isn’t it HUUUUUGE? This requires scrolling left and right and up and down. No. Thank. You.

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Google was pretty clear last August when they released this graphic illustrating exactly which types of intrusive pop up will get penalized.

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But the big question is, what about something like this?

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I created that LeadBox in LeadPages.  Does itimpede the user experience? Will my Leadbox be affected by the new ranking factor?

If you use LeadPages, here is what you need to know.

• Leadboxes are mobile friendly
• Leadboxes will open on a new page on all mobile devices so that they don’t impede content
• Timed + Exit Leadboxes WILL NOT WORK on mobile devices
• Use On Click Leadboxes, so that the user has to ask for it.

Read the latest from LeadPages regarding Google + SEO

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Well what about SumoMe?

I am a huge fan of SumoMe.  I don’t use SumoMe, but know of lots of amazing people that do and in researching them for this article they have taken this Google warning head on. If you have SumoMe, this is what you do.

• Control what your mobile users see by using the “Don’t Show to Mobile Users” rule for the SumoMe email apps
• Control who you show SumoMe to with the “Show” and “Don’t Show” rules
• You can embed the welcome mat below the fold using the “display mode” in the behavior tab, this is compliant with Google’s new guidelines.

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Clapping Dog Media makes SEO Simple. We help our clients get found by the perfect clients for the right reasons. We offer DIY, Done For You and have a course in the works where you can learn the basics of SEO in an hour. Interested? Get these tips. on a easy cheat sheet.

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[fusion_builder_container background_color=”” background_image=”” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding_top=”20″ padding_bottom=”20″ padding_left=”” padding_right=”” hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” menu_anchor=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none” last=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all”][fusion_title size=”1″ content_align=”left” style_type=”default” sep_color=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” class=”” id=””]

Yoast is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin.

[/fusion_title][fusion_separator style_type=”none” top_margin=”5″ bottom_margin=”5″ sep_color=”” border_size=”” icon=”” icon_circle=”” icon_circle_color=”” width=”” alignment=”center” class=”” id=”” /][fusion_imageframe lightbox=”no” gallery_id=”” lightbox_image=”” style_type=”none” hover_type=”none” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”0px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”none” link=”” linktarget=”_self” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”no” class=”” id=””] [/fusion_imageframe][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container background_color=”” background_image=”” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_webm=”” video_mp4=”” video_ogv=”” video_preview_image=”” overlay_color=”” video_mute=”yes” video_loop=”yes” fade=”no” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding_top=”20″ padding_bottom=”20″ padding_left=”” padding_right=”” hundred_percent=”no” equal_height_columns=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” menu_anchor=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none” last=”no” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all”][fusion_text]

It is a must have for all bloggers, creatives, lady bosses and business owners who are serious about being known on the internet and getting established as an expert in their field.

Yoast is only available on WordPress, if your site is built on Squarespace, it is okay, check out this this post all about Squarespace and SEO.

Getting Started with Yoast.

In this post, I am going to focus on writing optimized posts and pages with the help of the Yoast Plugin. If you need help installing and setting up Yoast, check out this step-by-step tour by MOZ.  I also found this detailed explanation that I found over at Mariah Magazine very thorough and helpful.

Once you have Yoast plugin installed it is time to focus on-page optimization — this is by far the handiest part of Yoast.

On-Page SEO

I feel like it must be stated that a plugin alone will not increase your findability on Google or any other search engine. Adding quality content to your website on a regular basis is the single best thing you can do for SEO. When Google sees that your website is active because you are blogging regularly, you are increasing the volume of helpful, quality, keyword-dense content on your site. And, further, if you are using a well-curated  keyword strategy then this content will increase your findability immeasurably. 

If you are doing all of these things regularly, you will be winning organic SEO.

via GIPHY

The second best thing you can do for your SEO Strategy is to properly use Yoast for on-page optimization and this begins with finding the best Focus Keyword for what you are writing about.

What is a focus keyword?

A focus keyword is the word you want the page to rank for, it is a concise summary of what the page is about in one to two words. When people search for that keyword, you want for them to find your page. When deciding on the focus keyword for the page, be sure:

• Don’t use longtails here, use those in your content
• Don’t be overly general–like “marketing” large sites like Wikipedia and ones who have a gigantic adwords budget will end up on page one of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
• Use a keyword(s) that flow well together because you will need to use it throughout the site to get a green light in Yoast!

Once you have decided on a solid focus keyword, Yoast evaluates the page’s content and provides feedback on how to improve the page for that specific keyword with a series of red, yellow and green lights. Like traffic lights, green lights are the goal in Yoast.  Get as many as you can to increase the findability of your page.

Now that you have the word, what do you do with it?

You want to place your focus keyword in specific locations including:

• Title
• Headlines specifically the H1
• Image Alt tags
• URL of the page often called the slug
• Page Content.

Once you have determined what the focus keyword is and have carefully crafted a post centered on the keyword and  long tail keywords that were found in the research phase of your project it is time to focus on the meta description.

How to Write a Meta Description

The meta description is the blurb of content that appears on the search engine results page once someone searches for the focus keyword, think of it as ad copy. The point of it is to get a searcher to click. Make the description easy to read and a bit salesy. Use the keyword in the Meta Description because it will get bolded if someone has done a search it!

Pro Tip:Google cuts off the description if quote marks are used, so don’t use any non-alphanumeric characters! If quotation marks are important in your meta description, you can change them to single quotes rather than double quotes to prevent truncation.

Yoast will give you a green light when you have entered the proper number of characters for your meta description –155– and will give you props when you have entered the focus keyword.

For on-page SEO optimization Yoast is the best tool because it provides instant green light feedback so that your post can be found and you can be known.

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