How can you be Google’s number one this year?

04 July 2018 9092 Views

Everyone wants to rank highly on Google. Why? Well, as the world’s biggest search engine, with more than 65% market share, it is more widely used, popular and famous than any other. As a result, it’s vital to keep up with its algorithm changes to make sure you stay ranking highly for your keywords.

The changes Google is making in 2018 that you need to prepare for are:

●        Speed – page speed will now be a ranking factor for Google.

●        Https – in light of GDPR and various high-profile data breaches, security is now a priority, with https being a key focus.

●        Mobile first – Google has changed the way it crawls sites, prioritising mobile over desktop.

Smartphone takeover

Some 80% of people now use their smartphone every day, while 40% of those people only use their mobile – and no other device – to browse and search the web. Consequently, more Google searches are now taking place on smartphones than computers.

Previously, Google’s crawling, indexing and ranking systems would usually use the desktop version of a website’s page content. However, thanks to the rise in mobile searches, the search engine has now switched to ‘Mobile-first’ indexing - using the mobile rather than desktop version instead.

What do you need to do to react to this change? Ensure you have a mobile responsive site, make sure your meta descriptions and tags are set up the same on mobile as they are on your desktop site, and keep content consistent across all platforms.

The perfect solution?

Above all else, make sure you have a responsive website. Rather than having a separate desktop and mobile site, responsive sites ensure you have one site which adapts to the device it’s being used on.

This means your content, meta descriptions and tags all remain the same across all versions of your website.

Greater web security

Google has been pushing for stronger and greater web security in the past few years, recommending that sites are updated to HTTPS. They’ve started, from this year, to make clear to users that non HTTPS sites are not secure, achieving this by marking them ‘Not secure’ in Chrome browsers.

If that isn’t enough to persuade you to make the switch, Google has now made HTTPS a ranking factor as well. In other words, HTTPS sites now rank higher in Google’s search results.

To make sure you continue to rank highly and to improve security, you should move your site to HTTPS. The best way of doing this is to choose a website that’s hosted on HTTPS – one that also includes secure hosting for all images and files such as PDF brochures.

Speed is of the essence

Like so much of modern life, speed matters when it comes to Google rankings. More than half of website visits (53%) are abandoned if a mobile site takes longer than three seconds to load, while nearly 20% of all search results end up with a searcher clicking on a result, before returning to the search results page because the site was too slow to load. It is, therefore, no surprise that Google is focusing on website speed, with slow loading sites likely to be penalised.

What can you do?

Monitor your site speed and make regular changes to improve it, cut image file sizes so people don’t have to wait for large files to load, and make sure your entire content – including social media sharing buttons and videos – loads in a fast manner. 

The ideal solution?

Make sure you have a fast loading site, with an intuitive, simple and easy-to-use content management system (CMS). This will enable you to access and regularly update your website in an easy manner.

By working on the areas outlined above, you will be able to keep pace with Google’s algorithm changes in 2018. This, in turn, should improve your chances of organically reaching number one on their search results page.

If you are searching for a quick solution to help you cover all your bases, TechnicWeb can assist. All our new websites are HTTPS secure and responsive. The sites look great on every device, and are easily updated through our simple to use CMS. You can click here to find out more.