How Google's New SEO Updates will Affect Your Business

Google has once again updated their SEO protocols. Page speed has been important to desktop searches for some time, but now page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile devices, too. Read on to learn how this will affect you and what steps you can take to improve your website's SEO ranking.

How will this affect me?

According to Google's blog, this update should only affect a small percentage of pages: the slowest ones. Make sure your website loads quickly and is mobile friendly to avoid a speed-related penalization.

How to generate leads with SEO

It's common sense that if more buyers and sellers come to your website, you have the potential to win more leads. That's why SEO is so important. SEO makes it easier for people you don't already know to find your website. On top of quick load-times on desktop and mobile, other ways to improve your SEO are below.

• Be visible – Google's mobile-first indexing makes it harder for your site to show up in mobile search results if your website isn't mobile responsive. This makes sense, but since more and more searches (especially in real estate) are done on mobile devices, it's critical that you show up among the first search results. Another thing that can make your website disappear is an http protocol. Chrome is warning people that any websites that don't have an https:// protocol could be unsafe. Make sure your website can be seen!
• Create high-quality, relevant content – Google's search results are typically pretty good. Their algorithms don't just look at the words you type into the search bar; they look at the intent. Think about what questions buyers and sellers would search for and provide information on those topics on your website. Google will be able to spot keywords naturally included in your content to direct people interested in those topics to your website.
• Build signals of trust – When other trusted websites link back to your website, it shows search engines that your site can probably be trusted, too. Writing guest blogs or articles on local real estate topics for other area businesses like mortgage lenders, moving companies, or builders can help build those signals of trust. Be sure to include a couple related links back to your website in the blog.

To view the original article, visit the Homes.com blog.