While some may question the relevance of SEO in 2018, there is no doubt for us that it will continue for a long time to come to contribute to business performance and the overall attractiveness of businesses on the web.

The goal of SEO is to increase your visibility on search engines, so that your customers can easily find you.

That's what you want, isn't it?

If not, just insert a "noindex" tag on every page of your site and you'll have peace... for good!"

So, here are five areas to implement to make your SEO strategy as successful as possible in 2018!

RankBrain or when AI rules SEO

Rank Brain is the Artificial Intelligence algorithm that Google developed to sort search results by understanding the meaning of users' queries, and not just the sequence of keywords.

Based on Machine Learning, RankBrain raises even more questions in the SEO world as it has officially become the third ranking criterion in SERPs after linking and content quality.

RankBrain intrigues the SEO community

The AI analyzes complex user behaviors such as pogo-sticking (which should not be confused with Bounce Rate) i.e., the back-and-forth trips made by Internet users between the Google results page and the sites they visit.

To learn about SEO techniques to take Google Rankbrain into account, we recommend reading this very well done article!

Watch your click-through rate carefully

The Click Through Rate or CTR is an important metric to include in your SEO performance tracking. In particular, it reflects your ability to attract and retain users to your site.

To put it simply, if Google indexes your content on the first page based on certain keywords but no one clicks on your link, your CTR will drop and drag down the valuable ranking of your web page with it.

The algorithm goes even further by comparing the CTR and the behavior of Internet users afterwards: if they click a lot on your link in the result page but tend to massively leave it immediately after, your positioning will also be penalized.

You will therefore need to work on catchy titles and meta descriptions while offering attractive content to retain the reader.

That's actually what the next point is about!

Content: quality first!

The quality of the content regularly published on your blog one of the keys to good SEO of your entire site, in addition to being the first brick of Inbound Marketing.

The first rule of a qualitative content is that it actually addresses an issue with your targets (whether they are customers or candidates).

If, upon rereading, you realize that what you're writing is more likely to please yourself than your audience, you've gone about it the wrong way!

This seems obvious, but we see this bias on about nearly half of all business blogs.

The second rule is to publish content with a regular rhythm, meaning at least 11 times a month. That's the number Moz estimates for Google's SEO tools to consider you a "fresh" source of information.

Your readers (and Google) expect fresh content from you all the time

This is difficult if you do it yourself, certainly, but fortunately, some agencies can help!

The third rule for coming up with content that gets your SEO off the ground in 2018 is to vary the formats while providing a strong user experience (UX) for your users.

Don't hesitate to offer as many visual content, interactive formats in JavaScript , animations gif to boost your messages. This will also allow you to have better sharing rates on social networks, fond of diversity.

Optimize useful, optimize for mobile!

This trend is not new, but it will grow in 2018.

If you haven't already done so, it's essential to check that your website is at least designed in Responsive Design, meaning that its display automatically adapts to the user's screen format.

To take it a step further, the Dynamic Serving offers two versions of a site on the same url, the first designed for computer screens and the second for mobile devices.

To offer mobile-friendly optimization, consider informing search engines that your pages are mobile-friendly so that they rank better in queries made on smartphones.

You can also create a dedicated mobile sitemap to help with indexing, get a url with a ".mobi" extension or do some mobile netlinking.

In 2018, mobile formats must be considered in your SEO strategy

More specifically related to content, using the mobile format implemented by Google in 2015 called "Accelerated Mobile Pages" or AMP will allow you to speed up the display of your text viewed on a smartphone or tablet.

To learn more about AMP, we recommend reading this comprehensive article, published on the Moz website in late 2017.

Video, the ultimate SEO content

It's a given: video is now the most viral, most engaging and most interactive medium. It must be part of your content palette in 2018.

The use of video format resonates perfectly with the innovative character of a company, which thus demonstrates its ability to use the most popular media to deliver its message.

It also corresponds to the need to capture the attention of an audience whose interaction time with content is increasingly short. Formats of less than 30 seconds are therefore to be favored because they are watched by 85% of Internet users, compared to 50% beyond 2 minutes.

Finally, video content allows you to convey emotion, which directly impacts the decision to buy or to apply for a job.

What techniques do you find most effective? Are there any others that you think are relevant?