Will an older website continue to rank well in Google?
Resting on your laurels with an old website may be bad planning Google confirms
Updating your website every few years is a sound investment as we’ve covered elsewhere in this blog. Keeping your site fresh, highly-functional and professional will not only keep you ahead of the local competition but, according to the latest advice from Google, will also preserve and even enhance your search rankings. The same official announcement also suggests that failure to update will likely see your website slipping away in search results.
Here is the official video release from Matt Cutts of Google:
So what’s going on here?
This isn’t a cynical attempt to sell more websites; it’s actually drawing attention to Google’s increasing focus on user experience (UX) and how they will reward sites which offer great UX with better search positions. Historically, relatively poor websites could rank well if they were boosted by lots of off-page SEO i.e. links. However, whilst good links are still very important, the quality of a website is now much more influential on website ranking – and simply something that must be prioritised.
User experience (UX)
During the video you will hear Matt Cutts refer to user experience lots of times and it’s really important to understand the significance of this. Google is now able to collate various quality indicators about your website, which are used as part of the overall ranking calculation. Any active observer of Google will advise you that their core principle is to deliver the best, most relevant ranking results to users – to do this they are taking increasing notice of website quality.
How does Google measure website quality?
That is a very broad question, the answer to which is really only known within their organisation. However, alongside the “traditional” factors such as the number and quality of links pointing back to your website, Google is now thought to be measuring aspects such as user “dwell time” and “bounce rate” as indicators of how well your site is appreciated by users. We covered this in more detail in an earlier blog article here, including how to improve dwell time and reduce bounce rate.
It is relatively easy to see why Google is doing this and why older websites will suffer as users bounce away quickly to find more appealing versions.
Summary
The official video from Google shown above confirms why older websites can start to lose search ranking over time as newer sites which are more appealing and offer an overall better user experience move ahead.
You can now be confident that it is not just your web design guy who is pushing for new work when he/she advises you to upgrade. Aside from the obvious aesthetic appeal of a new website, there are some extremely important search engine benefits to be considered too.
If you would like a free review of your current dental website and advice on a high-performing, cost-effective upgrade, please call the Dental Media team on 01332 672584 and we’ll be pleased to help.