With the roll out of Google’s Page Experience update now complete, it is past time to understand how this is affecting website rankings.
Last year, Google updated it’s algorithm to incorporate page experience as a ranking signal. The goal was to consider the user experience of pages in addition to the traditional way of using on-page targeting when returning a site in search results. In order to ensure there is no loss of ranking due to this issue, everyone with a website needs to understand how page experience is determined and just how much it will affect their site.
Obviously, SEO’s will have to pay close attention since changes will have to be made in order for a site to remain at the top of the SERPs or even compete for new ranking. Luckily, Google announced the different elements that would determine the overall experience of a page making it easier for optimizers to identify where work is needed.
The Four Categories of Google’s Page Experience Ranking Factor
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are three performance metrics that score a user’s experience loading a webpage. The metrics are designed to score how quickly page content loads, how quickly a browser loading a page can respond to a user’s input, and how stable the page content is as it loads in the browser. While originally intended to be used by developers, CWV are useful for SEO’s and site owners to get real-world data on their user’s experiences. See our Guide to Understanding Core Web Vitals here.
Mobile-Friendliness
Mobile friendly refers to how a website looks and functions on any mobile device such as smart phones or tablets. The readability of the content as well as, whether links and other on-page elements are clickable and accessible.
Check if your page is mobile-friendly using the Mobile-Friendly Test.
HTTPS
Serving your website over HTTPS ensures security for users most especially when transmitting sensitive data.
Check if your site’s connection is secure. Look at the security symbol to the left of the web address in a browser.
Non-Intrusive Interstitials
Intrusive interstitials is a fancy way of saying “pop ups” that block most or all of a page, which can lead to a poor user experience.
How does page experience affect my website’s SEO?
Google will still pay attention to authentic and relevant content but they will also be looking at how it is served up to best meet users’ needs. In cases where there are multiple pages that have similar content, page experience will become much more important for visibility in search.
Google expects you to offer your site visitors the best browsing experience available with optimal loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. This isn’t just for mobile either – it is across desktop also. Prior to now most SEO efforts have focused on more traditional on-page strategies. Moving forward we must pay additional attention to technical SEO strategies that prioritize the improvement of the website’s user experience through enhancements made to the code.
In order to maintain Page Experience on your website, you will have to commit to on-going checks of performance metrics. This will be especially important when it comes to new published content. Fortunately, Google has a variety of free tools for gathering insights. Unfortunately, any needed changes will likely have to be made by a developer.
If you need help understanding how your site is performing in Page Experience metrics, contact us. Allegro has experts in both SEO and programming so, we have you covered from audit to implementation of changes.
