We're all familiar with replacing our cell phones and computers every few years due to the rapid progression of technology. Believe it or not, your website works the same way. The recommendation for upgrading your website is once every 2-3 years, but SEO actually moves much faster. Some things that were done to your website six months or a year ago that were SEO-positive or even neutral could today be negatively affecting your ability to show up in search. Below are a few common things that most builders don't know are harming their SEO: 1. Uploading .PNG images instead of .JPG While they look virtually identical to each other, images with the .PNG extension are much larger than those with .JPG. Upload a handful of .PNG images on an Available Homes page of your website and suddenly you have a real problem with load time. Google has admitted that it disadvantages slow websites in its search results. Like a boat taking on water, you want to eliminate unnecessary cargo that might be weighing your site down. Switching .PNG images to .JPGs is a great way to start. 2.  Not truly mobile-friendly The term "mobile-friendly" is evolving to mean something more than what it used to. If you have a separate mobile version of your website, you're two steps behind. Today Google is looking for a website to at least be mobile responsive, which means you don't have to have a separate website for mobile users. More than a responsive website, though, Google is looking for your website to be easy to use on a mobile device. That means your buttons are big and easy to click, you allow users to quickly scroll or swipe through photo galleries, and overall your website feels zippy-fast on a phone. We call this type of responsive design "mobile-first." If your website is behind on the mobile times, it could be affecting your SEO. 3. Image as page content Print brochures were not meant to become website content, yet many builders will use PDFs and images from their print pieces to take the place of actual website content. It's tempting when an image contains both design and information, but Google can't understand the content of the image. As a result, pages that use print pieces in place of real text look like blank pages to Google. And since a known part of Google's evaluation of your website ranking is the quality and amount of content on your website, these print pieces may be harming your ability to rank well in search. 4. Lots of pages using the same keyword  It used to be that volume was the key to ranking well for a keyword. Even homebuilder sites created just a few years ago have multiple pages optimized for the same keyword. For instance, instead of having all communities, homes, and plans for a given metro area on one page, some builders have this information across 3-6 pages of their site so that they end up with a handful of pages trying to rank for "new homes in (city)." The problem with this today is that Google has become smarter and wants to know which of these pages is the single best one to show in search results, and now those pages are competing with each other for that spot. When that happens, none of the pages are going to be important enough to rank on the first page, and so the website might disappear from those search results. 5. Many sorting options The ability to sort and filter communities, homes, or plans on a builder's site is thought to be an important experience to provide homebuyers. However, if the sort generates a funky URL that looks something like builderhomes.com/Kansas-City?page=1&by=inv_sqft&dir=ASC&com=&city=OLATHE%2BR, you have a problem. To Google, these look like new pages of your site with virtually the same content as the original page, so Google thinks your website has a lot of what's called duplicate content. This is something to avoid when it comes to SEO. The best option today for sorted pages is to build them in Angular JavaScript, which allows the content to filter and rearrange without changing the URL.