Page Experience: New UX-Focused SEO Signals
As a digital agency, we are always committed to an optimal user experience and it seems that the Google bots are finally recognizing this too. Between mid-June and August 2021, the Google Search algorithm will be expanded, affecting the ranking of websites. The focus of the update is on the user experience, loading times, and mobile-first. You can find out exactly what this means for your website bellow.
By Sydney Luca-Lion
SEO Basics and a New Focus on UX
Let’s do a quick recap of the basics: Search engine optimization is important because it helps to improve the organic traffic on your website — that is, to reach those users who might come to your website via search engines without you paying for it. In general, the higher your website appears in the search results, the better. Some long-standing SEO metrics that algorithms crawlers use to rank include backlinks, valuable and original content, and meta information and keywords.
“User experience”, on the other hand, was pretty much irrelevant for SEO and ranking for a long time, until Google introduced Web Vitals as general guidance for what their algorithm and crawlers consider necessary to deliver a great user experience. Beginning in June 2021, Google will carry this even further and include a new ranking factor referred to as the Page Experience, which aims to assess the usability of a website from the perspective of the public. It will evaluate the behavior and performance of a page, how well the design and content are implemented technically and how the user’s experience of visiting a website is.
In Google’s own words:
Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.
Algorithm Update with Core Web Vitals
Google has specifically announced that it will update its algorithm from June 2021 with a series of user-centered metrics known as “Core Web Vitals”. Their existence in itself is not new — but that they are taken into account for indexing and ranking is. The Core Web Vitals are comprised of three signals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — Amount of time to render/load the largest piece of content. LCP measures the loading speed of the web page from the perspective of an actual user. It’s the time duration between the first point of page load until the moment where the viewport’s largest content is rendered. Guideline: Anything under 2.5 seconds is good.
- First Input Delay (FID) — Responsiveness to the user’s clicking, scrolling, and typing. FID relates to the interactivity between the user and web page. It measures the time it takes from the first user interaction until the moment when the browser responds to that action. Interactions could be a button click, link click, or any JavaScript-based custom control. Guideline: Anything under 100 milliseconds is good.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — Visual stability of the page. To do with movements of elements on web pages as/when they load. You have likely experienced an element shift up or down as it loads, making for a frustrating user experience. Guideline: Anything below 0.1 (i.e. a movement of 10%) is good.
How to Judge the Performance of Your Website
Wondering where and how to audit your own website? One of our recommendations is Lighthouse, a tool that checks performance, accessibility and SEO criteria, among other things. You can run Lighthouse as a Chrome extension and then create a report that provides an overview and perhaps first indications of opportunities for improvement.
Only Mobile Content is Indexed
Google has long preferred websites that are optimized for mobile users (mobile-first indexing). One innovation that Google has been implementing since spring 2021 is the conversion of all websites to exclusively mobile-first indexing — regardless of how high the proportion of mobile traffic is, which industry a site belongs to, or when the site was created.
From March 2021, Google will completely remove desktop-only pages from the index, i.e. content that is only visible on desktop will no longer be crawled. This shouldn’t be a problem for responsive websites, as they are designed to optimize content for the particular device on which it is viewed. We see a need for action in the case of very large and complex websites that might still contain desktop-only content or those that use the old m-dot sites (e.g. m.website.com).
Takeways
- Core Web Vitals will be decisive metrics for a good ranking in the future:
- Loading time — should be short
- Speed of interactions — should be fast
- Content shifts while loading — should be avoided
- Check content with a large file size and consider implementing lazy loading if necessary
2. Make sure your site is responsive and optimized for mobile
3. Run a Lighthouse report to audit your website
4. Relevant content is still key — good UX just helps it go further
5. Make sure that your designers and developers are knowledgeable about Core Web Vitals, and are on the same page so that everything is implemented optimally.
Hit the Mark
Our main recommendation? Make sure you optimize for the user — and the algorithm will notice. A holistic approach to your website with a focus on user experience in design and technical implementation, easily understandable navigation, and relevant and appealing content will lead to a successful website. Both in terms of SEO and from the point of view of your target audience!
Not sure if your website is quite there? We’ll gladly support you.
