Google page experience is a measure of how your viewers perceive the experience of interacting with your page. User experience has immensely affected the page rank for quite some time. Naturally, the human mind tends to avoid a negative experience and move on to a better one, whether personal relationships, jobs, or shopping; the same goes for the user experience on a webpage. Therefore, if users get a bad experience visiting your page, it will negatively impact your rank. According to the new update, Google will use a new page experience signal as the new ranking signal. The best SEO services are already prepared for implementing the changes that Google Page Experience Update is going to bring about. Understanding Google page experience is going to be extremely important.
The Google Page Experience Update will gauge the overall experience a user gets while visiting your website, and it is potentially different from the informational value of the page.
Latest Google Update On User Page Experience
This update targets to provide enhanced user-friendliness to WebPages. Page usability has become a value-addition factor now, while content is considered the most crucial factor in ranking a website. However, in multiple websites with similar content, website and web page usability experience will be the most important experience. Therefore, you must reap the full benefits Google Page Experience has to offer you. Our team of experts wants to tell you everything that will be included in the latest changes.
Over the past few years, Google has developed various signals for measuring user experience.
- Mobile-friendliness.
- HTTPS security.
- Browsing safety.
- Core Web Vitals (Loading Speed, Visual Stability, and Interactivity).
Google Page Experience update will take any company’s UX to the next level. It means that user experience will be directly affecting the ranking of the website. This means that the pages must be both useful and enjoyable for the users to climb up the rank ladder.
What Is A Positive User Experience?
An optimum page speed, effective use of imagery, utilizing a call-to-action on every page, and keeping a consistent branding will enhance user experience and foster the user’s trust and legitimacy. Your brand’s aesthetics will also play a role here (using the same logo, color palette, and design practices will make you a recognizable brand over time).
Other reputable SEO services in India that have written guest posts for us work on your web pages to foster a positive page experience will immensely improve your branding, while a negative one can take your website from zenith to low levels. After the Google Page Experience update, it will be clear how much weightage each of the parameters carries.
Core Web Vitals
The core web vitals are performance metrics used for measuring the user-friendliness of a website. Google will add more performance metrics apart from the current ones, but currently, there are three major vitals considered.
- Largest Contentful Paint: Generally known as LCP, Largest Contentful Metric measures how long it takes for the largest content on your website to download. You should aim to get an LCP of fewer than 2.5 seconds.
- First Input Delay: Google explains this performance metric very practically. Imagine you ring someone’s doorbell; the time taken by the owners to respond and open the door determines how comfortable you feel! FID is the time delay between when you first click on any button or click on the link on the website and the time it takes to respond or open the same. Ideally, a website must have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift: This performance metric helps track the content’s visual stability on a web page. It is primarily related to the user experience on mobile. Imagine how frustrating it will be to click or tap on a button that doesn’t stay fixed.
Other Important Web Vitals Optimized By SEO Services
- Mobile-Friendliness: The internet has more than 51 % users on mobile gadgets. This performance signal checks how responsive your page is for mobile users. Google wants to use this metric to give all its users high performance.
- Safe Browsing: This parameter is related to how safe it is to browse through your website. It means that your website should be devoid of any deceptive or social engineering content or malware.
- HTTPS: This signal indicates whether your site’s connection is secure (HTTPS) or not (HTTP).
- Intrusive Interstitials: This metric ensures that the main content of your website is accessible to the users. It looks into whether the web page contains advertisements or pop-ups that hide the main content or make it less accessible or lower the page’s navigability. However, keep in mind that the legally required interstitials like age verification or the login pages are exempt from counting here.
Did you know: Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) offers a formatting platform giving a quick and mobile-friendly page load? Creators refrain from using Google AMP as they have to abide by the HTML framework. However, Google AMP is a step forward to make your article rank in top stories. But after the Google page experience update, Non-AMP pages will also be open to top-level stories. The most reputable SEO services in India suggest that using Google AMP will be an advantage.
Optimizing Your Website For The Upcoming Page Experience Update
Google has given the information in advance about its plan to launch the Google Page Experience update in May 2021. That’s why; businesses should start preparing for the same well in advance. Here are the steps you should take to improve your web core vitals. Certain tools can help you in this.
The basic steps that you should take to improve your Web Core Vitals include:
Enhance The Mobile-Friendliness Of Your Website: Google had already switched to a mobile-first indexing website back in September 2020. Remember, having a mobile-friendly website will have a significant impact on your site’s ranking.
Go for Google’s mobile-friendly test, which also tells if your website is responsive.
Check the test results and view details for comprehensive information on important page loading issues.
Take corrective actions if required. For example, shifting your website from a site builder not optimized for mobile to a mobile-friendly website builder. For instance, you need a WebP format compliant website builder for faster image loading.
Informative Websites: WordPress is a great CMS and option. It offers a responsive design and is equipped with various types of plug-ins for enhancing user experience. Plus, you can get excellent knowledge on several forums for making your website mobile-friendly if you are using WordPress.
eCommerce Store: If you have an eCommerce website, then, first of all, you must take care to migrate the website to responsive or mobile-friendly solutions like BigCommerce or Shopify offering support for WebP. Other things you should take care of for improving the user experience on the web page include:
- The menus should be short and organized.
- The logo on the mobile site should take you to the home page.
- The search box must be accessible for mobile users.
- The text, as well as the images on your web page, should be responsive.
- Place the only highly specific CTA buttons like Shop Now; avoid vague ones (like Learn more). CTA buttons above the fold in the center. Avoid CTA buttons launching new Windows on mobile devices.
Improve Site Speed: Page loading speed is one of the crucial metrics in web core vitals. Everyone that uses the internet knows how frustrating it is to find pages that do not load quickly (it seems like they are taking eons!). Users tend to move on to another site in such a scenario. That is why ensure a quicker loading speed for optimizing the users’ experience. The bounce rate and user experience get tremendously affected if the loading speed increases.
Use Google Page Speed Insights to get vital information in this regard. Google Pagespeed Insights also helps you find out if your website passes the Web Core Vitals test. The best SEO services in India you hire will take care of all these parameters to lower the bounce rate of your website.
- Enhance Site Security: Keeping user information confidential is extremely important. Inadequate website security hurts your website’s rankings. Robust website security also ensures that your website does not get hacked by cybercriminals. Your Google Search Console can give you an insight if your website security has loopholes (use the Security and Manuals Actions to fix issues and get a review). You can also use the Google transparency report for a. deeper insight. Safeguarding the online information implementing an SSL certificate for your website will provide authentication to encrypt and change your website from HTTP to HTTPS. Choosing the right type of SSL certificate is essential here.
- Content Is Still The King: Quality content is still a significant concern. You will not benefit anything alone with upgrading user experience unless you do not have valuable and engaging content to give them a focus. High-quality posts are people-centric, and therefore, these use a lot of examples to explain and clarify the points you write. The headers and the headlines in the content should be attractive and meaningful. The content should be free from grammatical or spelling errors and highlight the writer’s expertise and authority and enhance your business and brand’s trustworthiness.
- Get Rid Of Intrusive Interstitials: The experts of SEO services in India suggest that anyone that chooses to visit your website must get easy access to valuable information that will prove useful to them. When there is interstitial blocking of your content, they must be dealt with to optimize the user experience. The pop-ups used on the website should not block the main content; preferably, they should get placed astutely.
Below are few examples of interstitials that are not a threat to your page ranking faster Google Page Experience update.
The Takeaway
With the above factors and evaluative information, you are on the right track for preparing your website for Google Page Experience Update. Staying ahead of your competitors means that you must take a proactive approach.
Author Bio
Navneet Singh is CEO of SEO Experts Company India. He is an SEO and Conversion Optimization Expert with a comprehensive knowledge of digital marketing details, known to create strategic SEO and digital marketing plans for each client’s website. He loves to share his experiences and knowledge with others and firmly believes that sharing adds value.
