The way websites work is always transforming and will always be transforming. In the last few years, website design and function have been changing at an even faster pace than usual due to the introduction of mobile devices driving websites to become responsive and Google’s consistently changing strict set of unwritten rules on how to rank well.

Up until the point when websites needed to become responsive, many a website could and have been surviving on the same design and coding styles that they were created in, sometimes being 10 years old or older. In 2010, your site that was built in 2000 was probably still able to skate by even though its design was obviously far outdated just as long as it actually had good and useful content.

Today, on the other hand, sites that have great content are now finding themselves not even showing up in rankings due to having an outdated site design and coding techniques that Google knows will make your site hard to use or unresponsive. Your business can’t afford to stick with a 10 year old design. In reality, a five year old design isn’t going to cut it either. Five years ago, there was no responsive design. You pretty much have a window of two to three years, and if your website is older than that, it needs an update.

We’ve already mentioned that not having a responsive website will hurt your ranking for obvious reasons, but there are several other things about older sites that are undoubtedly hurting your ranking as well. Is your site still using flash? A lot of older sites used flash, and all sorts of other coding gimmickry on their sites, in hopes of making it cool, just because they could, even if what they were doing had no real relation to the topic of their site. Who really needs flashing icons or a live digital clock on their webpage? Nobody does.

There are also some old coding techniques that will actually be losing support within the next year, which means if you’re using them, pages of your site may end up broken. One of the more common types of outdated coding you will see is the use of tables. Tables have gone out of favor because there is no way to make an old-fashioned table responsive. Technically you can build something similar using divs, but the older way of doing it is going the way of the dinosaur pretty quickly.

To stay ahead of the curve, make sure that your site has a modern design, is using the newest forms of code, and correct SEO techniques. All of these things in concert will end up netting you a good ranking on Google searches. Keep your website up to date by contacting us today.