7 Ways to Rank Higher on Google in 2018

When you need a product or service and nobody has recommended one, your first move is almost always the same: you ask Google. It rarely lets you down. But did you know you can optimize a website to earn better visibility on Google? Here are seven fundamentals to keep in mind in 2018 if your business wants to rank higher on Google.

A Pleasant, Accessible, Fast Website

With a growing share of web traffic now coming from smartphones, a site has to adapt easily to every screen size, whether visitors use a tablet, a smartphone, or a desktop computer.

On top of being “responsive” (the industry term for a site that adapts to any screen, and a standard part of any professional web design project), your website also needs to be fast and easy to use. That means minifying your CSS and JavaScript files, using caching, compressing every image, and cutting down the number of requests to your server.

Google offers several free tools to test your site’s speed, including PageSpeed Insights and Test My Site.

Content That Delivers Real Value

Is your site currently buried deep in Google’s results? Reread and rework your content so it is engaging for visitors and different from your competitors’ pages. Get creative and try to answer the questions your prospects are actually asking.

By offering search engines high-value content and optimizing it for Google, you can rise above the competition.

Tags and Structured Data Optimized for SEO

Every website includes a range of HTML tags and structured data that give search engines precise signals and can earn you more visibility in search results.

On one hand, semantic tags (title tags, meta descriptions, and heading tags) tell search engines exactly what your pages are about. Optimize them properly and you can climb in Google’s results. On the other hand, structured data (in RDFa, Microdata, or JSON-LD format) can help you display star ratings, reviews, event dates and locations, or details such as calorie counts or cooking time for a recipe. Our schema markup guide explains which types still earn rich results today.

Little or No Flash or JavaScript-Dependent Content

Search engines keep improving, but some elements are still hard for crawlers to read. Content displayed in Flash or rendered with JavaScript can get indexed, yet it will struggle to rank for competitive keywords. Sites built entirely in Flash or JavaScript are best avoided if you want Google to read and understand your information.

Stronger Local Visibility

Mobile searches keep growing, and mobile users are very often looking for something nearby. That makes it essential to boost your business’s local visibility, ideally by being listed on Google’s local results and Maps through a Google My Business listing.

According to Google’s research, half of consumers who ran a local search on their smartphone visited a store within a day. Our Google local SEO guide shows how to build that visibility step by step.

A Properly Secured Website

For several years now, online security has been one of Google’s priorities, and the company keeps urging site owners to move to HTTPS. Google has called HTTPS a lightweight ranking signal since 2014, so don’t expect a dramatic boost from it alone. Still, securing your website is something we can only recommend.

A Website Ready for Voice Search

With voice assistants getting better all the time (Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana), more and more people are asking their phones questions out loud.

According to Google, most of these voice queries are about directions, but it’s a safe bet that voice search will keep growing in 2018 (see our roundup of voice search facts and statistics). It pays to take advantage of these mobile searches by optimizing your site’s content for them.

If all of this feels hard to put into practice, Référenceur, a French-speaking SEO agency from Belgium and Luxembourg that works with U.S. businesses remotely, can help you get maximum visibility in search engines. Request a free assessment.

Where Things Stand in 2026

Adobe ended support for Flash on December 31, 2020, so Flash is no longer a factor at all. HTTPS became the norm after Chrome began labeling every HTTP site “Not secure” in July 2018. Google My Business was renamed Google Business Profile in 2021, and speed is now measured through Core Web Vitals, where Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay (FID) on March 12, 2024. For an up-to-date checklist, see our guide to website speed optimization.