Long gone are the days when marketing was solely about splashy billboard images and thousands of outbound cold calls. Of course, these still have a place in the marketing world, but for the average small business or B2B company, reaching customers has taken a new turn. Inbound marketing is where it’s at these days, and at the heart of inbound marketing is search engine optimization.

“People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction.”

~ Brian Halligan | CEO & Founder | HubSpot

As Halligan points out, the marketing world has shifted dramatically. SEO has become a crucial piece to this shift, as people search for information or products via Google around 5 billion times every single day. There’s no question that focusing on your business’ SEO is critical for a successful marketing strategy.

In an effort to help you get on top of SEO for 2018, I’ll cover two areas here: the trends to watch out for and the tools to take advantage of this year. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but it should help you gain a better understanding of what’s happening in the SEO world, and what tools you can use to become part of that world.

Ready to jump in?

SEO Trends to Watch in 2018

There’s no denying that SEO is in a state of constant flux. Just look at a Google results page from 2008 and you’ll quickly see that the page users are presented with has changed dramatically in the past decade. The important thing to realize is that these changes have come gradually, over a matter of years. So how can you make sure to stay on top of the SEO trends for 2018? Here I highlight three trends that SEO professionals have identified as the drivers of change for this year.

Guest Posting as a Go-To SEO Tactic Will No Longer Cut It

Guest posting has long been an effective and authentic way to build backlinks to your website. Marketers reach out to other blogs or websites, offering free content in exchange for a link back to their own homepage. This isn’t likely to go anywhere fast, but Google has said that the algorithm will be harder on blog posting for the sake of blog posting. In other words, you should be careful to only offer high-quality content to potential customers as you continue link building through guest blogging.

SERP Features Are Becoming More Important

The Search Engine results page (SERP) has become more important in recent years and is likely to continue in this trend in 2018. Instead of simple blue links, the Google results page now includes more snippets, highlighted content, local results and more. In response, you should take the time to check that your content includes the features needed to be highlighted on a SERP. Several of the SEO tools highlighted below should help you in this process.

LSI Keywords Are More Important Than Ever for Relevancy

SEO has always been about relevancy. Google’s algorithm seeks to find the best content to what a user is searching for – which is where Latent Semantic Indexing comes in. LSI is a fancy term for the method Google uses to build lists of long tail keywords related to any one keyword. SEO professionals have highlighted the possibility that Google will get even more specific in analyzing relevant content. As a response, you should spend a good amount of time conducting keyword research to ensure you can use the most relevant long tail keyword possible.

Top 10 SEO Tools for 2018

It’s not enough to simply have a good understanding of the 2018 SEO trends if you aren’t ready to jump in with both feet. If jumping into SEO like that sounds overwhelming, I have good news: there is a virtual treasure chest of SEO tools available for businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelance marketers.

This “Top Ten” list comes from a compilation of TrustRadius reviews, making up a TrustMap of the best SEO software tools.

Some of these tools are rising, and some have established themselves as leaders in the SEO world. Either way, picking out a handful of these tools will help you bring a new edge to your SEO tactics as you look to grow your business organically.

If a tool sounds like it will be useful for your context, you can find more information on their homepage or on their TrustRadius user review page.

Screaming Frog

Consistently rated as one of the top SEO tools, Screaming Frog offers a host of SEO, social media and web marketing services. What they’re best known for is their SEO Spider tool. The tool serves as the foundation for organic search efforts. As a web crawler and indexing tool, Screaming Frog can be used for competitive analysis, keyword research, and creating prospects for link building. The software can be a bit pricey for some, but the reviews show that the tool is well worth the cost for many.

Conductor Searchlight

Conductor Searchlight is another top rated SEO tool, with a focus on helping customers increase organic reach from start to finish. The tool helps clients find opportunities for outreach, optimize compelling content, and monitor their SEO results along the way. This way, users can continually adjust their SEO strategy for the most effective marketing outcomes. The tool bills itself as a comprehensive tool for marketing departments looking to focus on organic reach – and it has the price point to match.

Ahrefs

The Site Explorer is at the core of this SEO tool, which allows marketers to research keywords from competitors, identify backlinks, and highlight when the competition is using paid vs. organic advertising. The Ahrefs’ Site Explorer is the main focus of the software tool, but that’s not where it stops. Ahrefs also offers keyword research, a rank tracker, Search Engine Results Page analysis, and a full site audit to help ensure that every landing page is friendly to organic reach.

SEMRush

SEMRush bills itself as an all-in-one marketing toolkit geared toward freelancers and marketing departments alike – essentially anyone working as an SEO professional. The tool offers enterprise-level analytical tools, including backlinks auditing, technical SEO audit, competition research, and content creation ideas through keyword research. These tools primarily help marketers find organic reach opportunities, but can also help identify when paid advertising may be a good option. The SEO tool also integrates with other SEMRush offerings for social media and content creation.

Majestic SEO

Primarily a link index database, Majestic offers a full range of SEO tools for expanding organic reach. These include an index of backlinks, an extensive web crawler, a competitor comparison tool, prospect insights, and a nearly exhaustive ranking of the top 1 million websites. With these features in mind, reviewers tend to highlight the low price of the product and the useful tutorial tool when getting started.

Google Search Console

There’s nothing better than using a tool for SEO from the largest search engine in the world, right? The Google Search Console helps site owners “monitor and maintain your site’s presence in Google Search results.” If you are just getting started in SEO, spending some time on the Search Console can help you understand how Google sees your site, monitor performance, and identify which keyword queries are most likely to lead users to your site.

BrightEdge

BrightEdge is a comprehensive SEO tool designed to take marketers through the entire inbound marketing process, particularly for organic search. One of the best parts of the software tool is that it bridges the gap between pure SEO tactics and other crucial marketing tools, like creating mobile-friendly content and social media integration. In short, BrightEdge is designed to help marketers not only identify new opportunities but also create compelling content.

Nightwatch

Nightwatch is an advanced SEO tool with extensive functionality. Aside from rank tracking, backlink monitoring, and reporting, it offers advanced segmentation, filtering abilities, graphs and visualizations, and much more. It is exceptionally good at segmentation and visualization of the data. It enables internet professionals to get a better understanding of how search rankings, site changes, and traffic correlate and affect search visibility. Nightwatch is a great choice if you’re looking for an all-in-one SEO performance solution, especially for websites aimed at scaling.

Google Trends

Another powerful tool from Google, Trends allows anyone to search a specific keyword and identify how often it is searched,  as well as when it is searched and who searches for it. If you’re just getting started, Google Trends is a great place to get ideas for keyword research. The tool also spits out a list of related keywords, helping you expand your content fairly quickly.

Moz

Another all-in-one SEO solution, Moz is one of the more popular software solutions to search optimization. The tool offers link building opportunities, keyword research, site audits, and specific insights for how to optimize your site. The Open Site Explorer covers your marketing bases, letting you research backlinks, find any damaging links, and build a complete list of link building prospects.

WordTracker

As you may be able to guess from the name, WordTracker focuses in on one element of SEO: keyword research. Spending some time on WordTracker means you can build long lists of long tail keywords – and keep them all organized within the tool. By extension, you can get ahead of your competition by focusing in on more relevant long tail keywords.

The tools we highlight here can help you stay on top of the 2018 trends and even gain an edge for next year. If you’re not quite sure where to start, online customer reviews can be helpful in narrowing down your options to what will work well for your team.

About the Author: Brooklin Nash writes about the latest tools and small business trends for TrustRadius. When he’s not writing, you can find him reading YA dystopian fiction (with guilty pleasure) and cooking.