In the world of digital marketing, a year might as well be a century. So many changes and improvements take place that it can be hard to keep up. But if you want to stay ahead of your competition, you must keep up with new search engine optimization (SEO) trends. It is also important to review what transpired in the past to have a complete, big-picture understanding of the best way to more forward.
Along with a range of SEO changes, there have been a variety of other changes and evolutions over the last year. These changes occurred with Google, Bing, Mobile-first Indexing, and more. The following is an overview of just a few of the changes and improvements that occurred in 2018.
SEO
Some of the major changes here revolve around structured data. These include a new indexing API for job posting schema, enabling speakable markup for voice search related inquiries, updates to recipe markup, new Q&A schema, new job-posting guidelines, live stream support, datasets schema, and much more. Google also dropped support for the news meta tag and the standout tag and Editor’s pick in Good News. Also, Google’s changes around dynamic rendering and lazy loading content and photos occurred with JavaScript SEO over the last year, and this will continue through next year.
Mobile-First Indexing
Google started to roll out changes to mobile-first indexing to many sites in 2018. They wanted to start crawling and indexing the web from the view of a smartphone, rather than a desktop computer. Google also started sending out notifications through the Google Search Console whenever a site was changed to mobile-first indexing. Today, more than 50 percent of search results are indexed through mobile-first indexing.
Google Algorithm and Search Ranking Updates
The Medic Update was probably the most substantial search ranking algorithm change, which was classified as a “broad core algorithm update.” This is something they do several times a year. The Speed Update only affected the slowest sites where their ranking position in search was concerned. There was also a March Core Update and the April Core Update.
Google Local
Google Posts were highly fine-tuned this year. Many user interfaces around Google Posts were tested in desktop and mobile search. The Google My Business console was updated to enable Google Posts on the web or through the mobile app. However, toward the end of the year Google Posts traffic and engagement levels have declined. The apps for Google My Business, the control panel for local SEOs and business owners to manage local listings in Google Maps and Google Search, were vastly updated. Business owners can now update and manage their listings on the go.
Google Search Console
Everyone now has access to the Google Search Console. Google also removed the beta label from the new version and redirected some of the old Search Console reports to the new version at the end of the year. Google also began showing Search Console snapshots in the search results for site owners and removed the ability to use the public URL submission tool. Additionally, they changed the limits and the quotas on crawling and indexing within the Search Console. These are just a few of the highlights.
SEO Specialists at Premier Legal Marketing Stay Ahead of the Trends
We know how fast things move and change in the world of digital marketing, but we can help to keep your law firm ahead of the competition. We can build a marketing campaign that perfectly expresses who you are – your “brand” – to the audience you want to reach. We serve the internet marketing needs of lawyers and law firms exclusively, so we know exactly how to draw on your many facets to help you stand out. To learn more about how we can help you use SEO for your greatest success, please call the SEO specialists at Premier Legal Marketing at 856-320-2016 or contact us online.
We offer a full range of marketing services, including branding, website design and maintenance, social media marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, reputation management, blogs, press releases, email marketing, and more.
