SEO Ranking Factors: Mobile Ready and SSL Certificates

We continually try to keep our clients and readers updated on SEO ranking factors. Let’s be honest, a website is only helpful if your potential customers are actually reaching it. Below are some recent SEO topics we’ve discussed on our blog. We’re referencing these topics again because they’re, quite frankly, that important.

Mobile Ready

In the past you could get away with having a simple website that displayed properly, with no errors, across a small variety of screen resolutions. Now, with the wide use of mobile devices like smart phones and tablets, your site needs to render beautifully across many different types of screens, and user experience is not the only thing for you to consider.

Google has made it public knowledge, that your site's ability to display properly, and load quickly, within mobile devices, directly impacts how they rank you in their listings. Thankfully, many developers are making it standard practice to create sites that are "responsive", or in other words, sites that respond to the type of browser and screen resolution that the visitor is using.

Read more about mobile-responsive designs and their importance to your small business’ SEO in our recent blog.

SSL Certificates

An SSL certificate indicates you are using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol that encrypts information sent between your website and a visitor’s browser. While you may feel your website does not collect critical, sensitive data, Google gives higher ranking in website searches to those sites that have an SSL certificate. In addition, browsers are starting to display sites as insecure when the site collects passwords or credit card data without an SSL certificate. You'll also need to make sure that your site's SSL credentials are up-to-date, and you should always let search engines know what pages on your site should be visited through a secure link (https).

Read more about recent SSL changes on our blog.

Implementing these small factors are important in making sure that your site receives the proper attention from search engines like Google, but they are also beneficial to your users. Users are becoming more tech savvy, and they'll appreciate your site if there are no errors or roadblocks in the way of a great viewing experience.

We would love to talk more about your site design or SEO strategy. If you’d like to speak to one of our SEO experts, contact us.