The internet is constantly evolving, and what served you well in 2016 and even 2017 won’t necessarily do you any favours online in 2018.

Here’s our guide to the most important issues for your website in the coming year, and how you can ensure you’re on point.

No time to read? Click here to download an infographic of this post.

Tighten up your site security

As we warned you in our previous blog about SSL, Google is toughening up against unsecured sites. You might have noticed the security warnings displayed by your browser when you visit some sites; from 2018, they’re going to get more noticeable and more frightening.

If your website doesn’t have an SSL Certificate, Google will be displaying a Security Warning to all your visitors. That’s so 2017. The great news is, it’s quick and cheap to have an SSL certificate installed in your site, which will remove all the security warnings AND protect any data that passes between your website and your customers.

We can add an SSL certificate to your site in minutes. Just read our SSL blog to discover all its cool features, then contact us to arrange to get one.

Prepare for GDPR

Currently, there are 28 different sets of Data Protection regulations being used across the EU. From May 25th 2018, there can be only one: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Despite Brexit, the UK has committed to follow these new regulations, which means a massive shake-up of how we all collect, store and delete customer data.

We’ll be posting our Easy Guide to GDPR in January, but in the meantime, start brushing up on the new regulations. You can’t ignore or fudge this issue: GDPR brings with it some eye-watering fines. Companies breaking GDPR will be liable to pay €20 million or 4% or annual global turnover, whichever is higher. That’s enough to put many of us out of business.

If you want to read more, here’s a helpful GDPR infographic put together by our friends over at IT Governance. And we’ll be back in January with our Easy Guide.

Ensure your site is mobile-friendly

Where are you reading this? If it’s on your phone or tablet, then you are bang up to date. Research shows that almost 80% of internet users now access the web via a mobile device, especially if they’re online-shopping. So, is your website mobile-responsive? Don’t assume it is. In fact, only 15% of UK small businesses have a website that’s optimised for phones and tablets.

If you’re not sure how mobile-friendly your website is, contact us. We can test how it displays on mobile devices, and every type of browser, and give you tips on bringing it up to date.

Start a business blog

If your website doesn’t have a blog, expect it to get left behind in 2018. Every type of company, from Coca-Cola to Tesco is now blogging to showcase their products, talk informally, and add a lot of relevant content to their website. Some global companies like IBM have over 30 different blogs. Can we persuade you to add just one?

If you’re too busy running your business to write about it too, that’s where we come in. We now offer a full copywriting service, and can write original blog content just for you. We also offer content plans, a calendar of unique blog-post ideas, and a full content review of your site. Just get in touch to see how we can help you shout a little louder into the world in 2018.

Make Google love you

Finally, 2018 is the year when you have to optimise your site for search engines, or risk being the internet’s best-kept secret. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the art of making Google love and trust your website, and consequently push you to top of the search results. We’ve written a post about SEO. So find a quiet moment over the Christmas break, and have a read. Afterwards, if you’d like us to help you with any of your SEO strategy, as ever: get in touch.

Download our infographic

We’ve put together a simple infographic of these tips that you can use as a checklist to bring your site up to date. Download it here. And have a fabulous New Year from all of us at SiteBites.