It’s been a small Google ranking factor since 2014

How do you know if your website uses HTTPs? Just look at the browser bar. If there’s a lock icon, the connection is secure: If this isn’t the case, it’s worth fixing. Recommended reading: What is HTTPS? Everything You Need to Know Mobile-friendliness Mobile-friendliness became a ranking factor for mobile results in 2015. Now, with Google’s move to mobile-first indexing almost complete, it’s also a ranking factor for most sites on desktop. If you’re curious how mobile-friendly your site is, check the “Mobile Usability” report in Google Search Console: Recommended reading: Mobile-First Indexing: What You Need to Know Freshness Freshness is a notable ranking factor because it’s a query-dependent signal. That means it matters more for some keywords than others—and this comes back to search intent.


Take a keyword like “best smartphone.” All of the results us phone number list were published recently. That’s because freshness matters for this term. New smartphones are coming out all the time, so searchers are hardly likely to want to see a review of the iPhone 10 in 2021. Now look at the results for a query like “how to tailor jeans”: Despite some being published recently, some of the top organic search results were published in 2014. That’s because the freshness of results doesn’t really matter. The process for tailoring jeans is largely the same today as it was ten years ago. Recommended reading: 10 Google Ranking Factors You Shouldn’t Ignore How can I get more clicks from organic search? Ranking high in Google is the main part of the search traffic equation, but you can attract more clicks by crafting compelling title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs.



These are the three things that show up in Google’s search results: SIDENOTE. Google doesn’t always show a page’s meta description. They often use other content from the page for the descriptive snippet in the SERP. Let’s look at a few best practices for each. Title tag best practices Keep it within 50-60 characters. Long title tags get truncated in the SERPs. Write in sentence case or title case. Never upper case. Include your keyword. But only when it makes sense. Match search intent. Choose an angle that aligns with what searchers are looking for. Include your content’s USP. Tell searchers why your content is unique (e.g., “How to make an apple pie” → “How to make an apple pie in 20 minutes”) Don’t clickbait.