Submitted by a.foley on Tue, 01/17/2017 - 10:04
Migrate to HTTPS
Since Google began offering a ranking incentive to sites that use secure HTTPS rather than HTTP, the number of sites becoming encrypted has grown. While Google has maintained that using HTTPS offers a very modest ranking boost, the fact is that the majority of sites on the first page of Google tend to be encrypted, and there has been anecdotal evidence shared around the SEO community showing ranking improvements after switching.
But it’s not just the chance of improved search rankings that should convince you now’s the time to switch – web browsers are also beginning to discriminate against non-secured sites.
Think mobile-first
Back in 2014, Google made changes to its algorithm that demoted non-mobile responsive sites in the search results for users on smartphones. Since then, mobile search has grown – now more searches are conducted on mobile devices every day than on a desktop or laptop.
