2018 signals the need for businesses to gear up for the Google’s move to implement mobile-first indexing. As it turned out, mobile users have now surpassed desktop users all over the world since last year and Google is taking the step to take this into consideration when ranking sites that appear in its search results.
This affects SEO strategies since mobile sites that are mobile friendly will now be prioritised by Google in the ranking. While it did intend to roll out the changes in a way that should not hurt sites that are non-mobile-friendly, it is expected that these sites are definitely going to take a hit stats-wise. This is the reason why now is the best time for businesses to develop a long-term strategy to ensure that their website is ready. See Also: B2B SEO Agency
Mobile responsive site
This is definitely something that you must start working on if you want your stats to not get hit when the changes are officially rolled out. A good way to check if your site is indeed mobile friendly is to check it on your phone. Auditing your site will help you get a better idea of its status to see if there may be a need for your site to be redeveloped.
Site redevelopment
If the audit gives you results that show that your site is not as mobile-responsive as you hoped it would be, redeveloping it may be the next best step. This means finding an agency that you can task to take care of reviewing your site and your current strategy. Make sure that they will come up with a development plan that is not only focused on device usage, but also on best SEO practices too.
Metadata
While it was announced before that meta descriptions may not have any bearing on search rankings, they do serve an important purpose for SEO. They can be used as an opportunity for your site to be separated from the rest of your competitors as these descriptions can help convince searchers to visit your page instead of clicking on others.
404 pages
These are paged that do not exist or are not found on a website. If you ever have a page that you decide to get rid of for some reason, it may be better for you to use 301 instead of showing a 404 and have users redirected to another page in your site- preferably a relevant one- instead of the homepage. Remember that when you have lots of links that point to inactive or non-existent pages to your site, you are missing out quite a lot on PageRank which could otherwise help you get a better ranking in search results and get more traffic.
Duplicate content
While Google says there is no penalty for duplicate content, it can have a negative effect on rankings. Republishing content that is very much similar to what other sites have will mean that Google will have a hard time choosing which pages to rank which then causes your ranking to suffer.
With 2018 bringing in a lot of expected changes in the SEO landscape, making sure that you are up to date is crucial. Learn more about important SEO tips by reading about Mason Soiza online.
