News Courtesy of Forbes.com:
While this SEO trend isn’t new for 2018, it’s still worth mentioning because of its importance. Google will continue to focus on user experience to help determine which websites to show in search engine result pages.
It’s crucial to remain on top of your site’s speed, context, relevancy and quality of content, while also being aware of your visitors’ browsing habits, so you can make any necessary changes. For example, if your visitors abandon your site after 30 seconds or you have a high bounce rate, this will affect your SEO ranking. So, stay on top of those analytics reports!
SEO is an ever-changing system that is crucial to your online success. It’s imperative to stay current with the SEO trends well throughout your years of operation to ensure your website coincides with the requirements of Google. The good news is that, as long as you follow the SEO trends mentioned, you’re set for 2018 — that is unless Google changes things again.
Ryan’s Take 
User experience rounded out the top 5 SEO trends of 2018 according to Forbes. It should be considered a given these days, but unfortunately a lot of web designers still neglect optimization and accessibility. In order to get the most possible conversions for your website’s goals, you need to cater to everyone. This means that no matter what device visitors are using, information is readily and easily obtained.
Now that Google has rolled out mobile-first indexing, it’s really become apparent that non-responsive website layouts will suffer in the rankings. Sure, you can still outrank competitors if your content and off-site SEO strategy are vastly superior. However, if you’re up against an equally ranked competitor and their website is faster and responsive, you’ll lose every time.
I agree with the article regarding staying on top of analytics reports. There is a wealth of information you can view from Google Analytics data. Back in its infancy visitors or hits were the main statistic to watch. While that may still be true, visitor behavior and acquisition are very important too. How did your visitors find your website? What page was the most popular? Once you determine those factors you can plan a strategy to keep those visitors engaged in your website. Such as editing a popular blog post on your website and providing useful updates.
