The rules of search engine optimization (SEO) can change so quickly, by the time you implement yesterday’s best practices, a new set of considerations seemingly take their place.
And that moving target is set to move again as shifts in user behavior continue to force Google’s hand. Since more searches now come from mobile platforms than desktops, Google will soon roll out a fully updated mobile-first index, which considers the mobile version of a website its primary version.
This change in how Google ranks sites—which the search-engine giant has been pushing, in drips and drabs, for years—has already altered some tried-and-true conventions for placing content high up in a search result.
Mobile Matters
From now on, a mobile site is going to be a top ranking factor. This doesn’t mean that a web page needs to undergo responsive design, wherein a desktop page scales in response to the size of the screen—you can have two separate versions of a site without being penalized. But it’s absolutely critical to ensure all of the content on the mobile site matches up with what users can find on the desktop site.
Quality Matters
First, how long a page takes to load is a big deal. If it takes three seconds or more, users will typically bail on that site, and the resulting exodus will have a negative affect on your ranking.
Second, the quality of the content is key to rising in the ranks. To be ranked as the top site, you have to actually be the top site. That means you have to offer the best and most relevant—not necessarily the most—content on a particular subject.
Finally, what that content looks like on a mobile device is important too: The size of the fonts, the readability of the page, how easy it is to navigate—these are all important aspects of the user experience, and therefore, important to Google.
Investment Matters
The biggest mistake that companies tend to make when approaching SEO is in under-funding the effort. Either they don’t hire a dedicated SEO resource, or they’ll make SEO an add-on duty to a marketing person or maybe a developer that shows an interest in it. But they’re missing the level of expertise that stretches across many disciplines, like marketing, user experience, PR, technology.
Courtesy of PRNewsOnline
