It is expected that in 2018 the search engine results pages (SERPs) would have more features. All SEO (search engine optimization) professionals out there want the website they are working for to receive a high amount of traffic at all times. Normally, this happens only when you get to higher positions on the SERPs. The higher you go more traffic you get on your website. However, they just do not aim to get there they also wish to stay there as long as possible. With the new developments taking place in SERPs it may no longer be sufficient to just reach the top as far as getting high inbound traffic is concerned.
Rich snippets will have to be structured with more care
There are two kinds of snippets – the regular ones and the rich ones. Both have a title that can be clicked, a Meta description, and a URL (universal resource locator). In case of the rich snippets the titles are more condensed and are inclusive of “_” rather than just a dash -. They have images and reviews as well. The way this data is structured determines how the information is showed by the search engines. Research has proven that search results which have properly formatted snippets get more clicks.
Greater speed of pages
This is the day and age when everything has become a lot faster and there are greater demands being placed by one and all. People these days want everything within the shortest possible time and this includes information as well. The most frustrating thing of all is to have a website, from where you can get the information that you need, take eons to load. Normally, these days, people do not wait for more than 5 seconds for a website to load – they hop off to another site.
Greater relevance of pages
Google is always looking for ways to provide you the best experience in web browsing. For this it is always looking at websites that are safe and at the same it is also looking for websites that can match the intent with which you are carrying out a particular search. It may be that the particular website does not exactly fit your query. This also implies that Google would now be judging how relevant the content on a website is before including it in the SERP. It is for this reason that it uses a tool known as Latent Semantic Indexing.
Voice search becomes more real
Just as it happened in 2017, in 2018 too voice search will continue to march ahead in its fullest glory. A lot of you actually prefer to talk rather than typing, most obviously because it takes a lot less time to do the former. In fact, with a voice search you can make your queries a lot more detailed. More than that, voice recognition software has now reached a stage where you all are a lot more comfortable in placing faith in its capacity to understand the way you normally speak.
Mobile devices would become a lot more important
Ever since they came into being smartphones have become the weapons of choice as far as web browsing is concerned. They are only growing in prominence in this regard. The number of people using their smartphones to browse the net is a lot greater than the number of people using desktops for the same purpose. Having a website that is mobile friendly is a compulsion these days.
Apart from this it is also expected that linkless backlinks will come into prominence in 2018, and SERPs would continue to become a lot more personal.
