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What Google Wants From Your Website

Google Wants Your Website Secure and Mobile Friendly

With the end of the year nearing and the 4th quarter set to begin, there are a few things regarding your website that Google wants you to be aware of as a business owner.

The First is Google’s Mobile First Index

We all know how important mobile is these days with over 58% of users browsing on mobile instead of a desktop. For over a year Google has been discussing the imminent transition to a mobile-first index. What does this mean? Historically, Google has indexed your site based on your desktop experience and the content that exists upon it. It uses your desktop experience and the content you have on it to rank your site. This will change in 2018. Simply put, Google will begin to index and rank your site based on the content on your mobile experience, and not your desktop experience as it has done historically.

This has the potential to be a massive shift for many websites! Just having a mobile-friendly website does not mean you are ready to go. If both the desktop and mobile versions of your website have the same content, then you most likely won’t see much shift. However, if your site doesn’t have the same content on both the mobile and desktop versions, your site could see drops in rankings. A good example of this would be a website that condenses its content for the mobile experience. By eliminating that content, you have created a different mobile version from the original desktop version, which is what is currently ranking.

Our recommendation: Review your current website to make sure the content that is present on the desktop version is also on the mobile version. If it is not, contact your current web developer and have them start working on it as soon as possible.

Is your website secure?

The next thing to consider for your website is your level of security. Google has announced that starting in October – sites without https:// will show as “Not secure” in Google Chrome. With Chrome becoming the most popular browser and claiming 45% market share, this is an important change to make to your website.

If your website has any kind of forms or data that is being transferred, this is something that should be a staple on your website anyway. Let’s face it, you don’t want to lose or expose your customer’s data to any potential threats, right? You don’t want to become the next Equifax!

Our recommendation: Add an SSL or Secure Socket Layer to your website. The good news is that this can be done fairly easily and for free. If you would like to tackle this on your own, we recommend letsencrypt.org as a great starting point. If not, call your current website provider and ask them to enable SSL on your website.