Google changed. A lot.
If you were trying to rank a website back in 2018, you probably remember the feeling of the floor shifting under your feet. It wasn't just one update; it was a total pivot in how the algorithm "thought" about content. We moved away from the era of just matching keywords and stepped into something much more human, and frankly, more frustrating for anyone looking for a shortcut.
Looking back at google ranking factors 2018, the biggest takeaway isn't about meta tags. It's about the "Mobile-First Index." Before 2018, Google mostly looked at the desktop version of your site to decide where you should rank. Then, in March of that year, they flipped the switch. Suddenly, if your mobile site was a stripped-down, ugly version of your desktop site, your rankings vanished.
It was a wake-up call.
People were glued to their phones. Google knew it. They decided that if you didn't provide a top-tier experience for someone on a 5-inch screen, you didn't deserve the top spot. Period.
Speed Became a Binary Reality
Remember the "Speed Update"? It rolled out in July 2018. For years, we’d been told that speed mattered, but this was different. Google explicitly stated that page speed was now a ranking factor for mobile searches.
Honestly, it wasn't just about being "fast." It was about not being "slow."
There’s a nuance there. If your site loaded in two seconds versus one second, you didn't necessarily see a massive jump. But if you were that site taking eight seconds to load over a 3G connection? You were toast. Google started penalizing the outliers. They used metrics like First Contentful Paint (FCP) and DOM Content Loaded (DCL) to see when a user actually felt like the page was ready.
Why technical SEO got harder
Technical SEO used to be about robots.txt and sitemaps. In 2018, it became about critical rendering paths. Developers had to learn how to defer non-essential JavaScript. Images had to be compressed without looking like a blurry mess.
📖 Related: New Update for iPhone Emojis Explained: Why the Pickle and Meteor are Just the Start
If you weren't using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) or caching your assets properly, you were fighting a losing battle. The "Mobile-First" world demanded efficiency.
The Medic Update and the Rise of E-A-T
August 1, 2018. If you worked in the health or finance niche, that date is burned into your brain.
The "Medic" update was massive. It wasn't just about links or keywords; it was about trust. This is when the SEO world started obsessing over E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines became the most-read document in the industry. They wanted to know: who wrote this? Does this person actually have a medical degree, or are they just a random blogger giving heart surgery advice? For "Your Money or Your Life" (YMYL) sites, the bar for google ranking factors 2018 wasn't just high—it was vertical.
- Author bios became a ranking factor in a practical sense.
- The "About Us" page actually started to matter for SEO.
- Citations and references to high-authority peer-reviewed journals became the new backlink.
It changed the game for content creators. You couldn't just hire a cheap ghostwriter to pump out 500-word articles about "how to cure diabetes with cinnamon." Google got smarter. They started looking for signals of real-world reputation.
Content Length vs. Content Depth
There was this persistent myth in 2018 that you needed exactly 1,890 words to rank. People saw studies from companies like Backlinko that showed longer content tended to rank higher.
But here is the thing: length was a correlate, not a cause.
Google didn't have a word counter in the algorithm. What they had was a "thoroughness" detector. Longer articles ranked because they usually answered the user's question—and the three questions the user was going to ask next. This is what we call "Latent Semantic Indexing" or LSI keywords, though Google’s Gary Illyes has famously poked fun at the term. Basically, Google looked for related terms. If you're writing about "baking a cake," they expect to see words like "flour," "oven," "temperature," and "whisk." If those aren't there, the content feels thin.
👉 See also: New DeWalt 20V Tools: What Most People Get Wrong
RankBrain and the Death of Exact Match
By 2018, RankBrain—Google’s machine-learning algorithm—was fully integrated.
It meant that if you searched for "how to fix a leaky pipe," Google knew you might also be interested in "plumbing repair tips" or "emergency plumber near me." The algorithm started understanding intent over syntax.
This made the old-school tactic of "keyword stuffing" not just obsolete, but dangerous. If you wrote a sentence like "We provide the best plumbing repair plumbing services for your plumbing needs," RankBrain would flag that as low-quality junk. Humans don't talk like that. Google decided its algorithm shouldn't read like that either.
Engagement metrics started leaking in
Dwell time. Click-through rate (CTR). Pogo-sticking.
There is still a huge debate among SEOs about whether these are direct ranking factors. But in 2018, the evidence was mounting. If someone clicked your link, realized your site looked like a scam from 2004, and hit "back" within two seconds, Google noticed. That’s "pogo-sticking." It’s a signal that your result didn't satisfy the user.
You had to hook the reader immediately. A good H1 tag and a compelling intro weren't just for "user experience" anymore; they were for survival in the SERPs.
Secure Sites (HTTPS) Became Non-Negotiable
Back in 2014, Google said HTTPS was a "lightweight" signal. By 2018, it became a loud one.
In July 2018, Chrome started marking all HTTP sites as "Not Secure."
✨ Don't miss: Memphis Doppler Weather Radar: Why Your App is Lying to You During Severe Storms
Think about that. A giant red warning for every person visiting your site. Even if it wasn't a direct "ranking factor" in the sense of a numerical score, the indirect impact was devastating. If users see a security warning, they leave. If they leave, your engagement metrics tank. If your metrics tank, your ranking follows.
Everything in the google ranking factors 2018 ecosystem was connected. You couldn't fix one thing and ignore the rest.
Links: Quality Over Quantity (For Real This Time)
Backlinks remained the backbone of the algorithm, but the "Penguin" era was over. We were in a post-Penguin 4.0 world where spammy links were simply ignored rather than triggering a site-wide manual penalty in most cases.
But "ignored" is just as bad as "penalized" if you're spending money on them.
The focus shifted to "natural" links. A link from a relevant, high-traffic site in your niche was worth more than 1,000 links from a "private blog network" (PBN). Google’s ability to map the "neighborhood" of the web became terrifyingly accurate. They knew who your friends were. If your site was only linked to by "link farms," you were guilty by association.
What You Should Do Now
If you are looking at your site’s performance and wondering why 2018-era tactics still matter, it’s because they formed the foundation of the modern web. The shift to mobile, the obsession with speed, and the requirement for "E-A-T" are now the baseline.
- Audit your mobile experience. Use a real phone, not just a desktop emulator. If your buttons are too close together or your font is too small, you are losing points.
- Fix the "Need for Speed." Compress your images using WebP format. Get rid of the bulky WordPress plugins you don't use. Every millisecond counts.
- Prove you’re an expert. Update your author bios. Link to your LinkedIn profile. Show your credentials. If you don't have them, interview someone who does and credit them.
- Write for the "Next Question." Don't just answer the keyword. Anticipate what the user needs to know after they read your first paragraph.
- Clean up your link profile. Stop buying cheap packages on Fiverr. One guest post on a real, breathing website is worth more than a month of automated link building.
The landscape of google ranking factors 2018 was the beginning of a more "human" internet. Google stopped looking at websites as collections of code and started seeing them as answers to human problems. If you want to rank, stop trying to trick the machine and start trying to help the person behind the screen. That was the secret in 2018, and it’s still the secret today.