{"id":42936,"date":"2018-01-16T07:05:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T15:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/?p=42936"},"modified":"2023-11-14T00:07:03","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T08:07:03","slug":"2018-digital-marketing-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/2018-digital-marketing-predictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Clay\u2019s Predictions for Digital Marketing in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Do you remember the buzz and flurry of activity around Y2K? Possibly not, but it was a fire drill of activity to avoid disaster. This year may seem similar as things evolve rapidly in the realm of search.<\/p>\n

For example, sites that have put off mobile readiness \u2014 thinking that most of their traffic comes from desktop, so why bother with mobile? \u2014 will find themselves in crisis this year.<\/p>\n

Marketing teams across the board will face receding budgets as the C-suite becomes increasingly unwilling to dole out money without solid proof that it delivers results (per Gartner\u2019s Oct. 2017 CMO survey<\/a>).<\/p>\n

As a result, I expect to see a focus on attribution tools and better data reporting as the industry scrambles to connect the dots of customer journeys and justify marketing spend.<\/p>\n

Predictions for digital marketing in 2018 are fairly easy to make \u2014 at least compared to the last 13 years of annual prediction posts I\u2019ve written. I am sure that most in the SEO industry who follow Google see these trends already progressing.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, the hot buttons SEOs know now will stay hot.<\/p>\n

\"checkers
Make the right moves this year, informed by Bruce Clay’s 2018 digital marketing predictions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here are my predictions for mobile first<\/a>, voice search<\/a>, content<\/a>, linking<\/a>, speed<\/a>, SEO<\/a>, ecommerce<\/a>, machine learning<\/a>, virtual reality<\/a> and video<\/a>, to help you make more informed decisions this year.<\/p>\n

My Digital Marketing Predictions for 2018<\/h2>\n

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\nMobile First:<\/strong> Google\u2019s mobile-first index will become a bigger player starting around February. I expect that there will be a significant \u201cdisturbance in the force\u201d when companies that have rested on their brand realize that the indexed content has changed enough to disturb their rankings.<\/p>\n

For sites that are not mobile friendly, Google may continue to index the desktop version and hold off moving it to the mobile-first index. However, I don\u2019t expect their rankings to hold since mobile user experience is the search engine\u2019s top priority.<\/p>\n

I anticipate Google will roll out mobile-first faster than expected. But even the preparation for it is changing the search engine\u2019s index \u2014 which impacts rankings.<\/p>\n

For instance, businesses trying to speed up their sites may remove large images, eliminate non-essential content, and modify other elements including links. Just altering the navigation menu to simplify it for mobile users changes a lot. All of this fluctuating content will affect the index and (combined with other changes) potentially create a flurry of lost-traffic panic.Sites that have put off mobile readiness \u2014 thinking that most of their traffic comes from desktop, so why bother with mobile? \u2014 will find themselves in crisis this year. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\nVoice Search:<\/strong> Right behind mobile, I predict voice search will be a major SEO focus in 2018. This is not because it impacts ecommerce so much as it impacts information and news sites.<\/p>\n