According to several SEO professionals, there are several changes to the main ranking factors in 2017. Here are some of the biggest changes and practical methods of applying these new methods:
Speed
Site speed is one of the biggest additions to the search algorithm in the recent past. You can improve your site loading speed by:
Caching as many files as you can. Look for anything that remains static or changes very little and converts those to static content that you can optimize for size further.
Combine as many external files as you can, which will help reduce the number of connections the browser needs to open before loading the page.
Also, take care to optimize your images as much as possible. Optimize each image for the exact size on the page and use the format that best compresses that specific picture.
HTTPS
When you migrate to HTTPS, remember to migrate your canonical tags, so you don’t miss out any traffic. The migration is a lot of work, but the rewards in security and potential ranking improvements are worth the effort.
Metadata
Almost all testing shows that keywords in the title tags show no benefits. However, for lower ranked pages, tags still do make a difference for ranking. Don’t use studies that look at the top three positions to affect all your pages.
Results
With more and more structured data showing in results, click rates are dropping for most sites. Combat this change by using schema and featured snippets to get your content above the fold.
