Google’s Page Experience Update: What Changes You Have to Make to Your Site

Google’s main goal and general mission for the upcoming update to their algorithm is to provide internet users with exactly what they’re looking for.

According to KWD AU With as few obstacles and disruptions as possible, they’ve been urging us and showing us for over a year now that this new page experience algorithm is going to be launched offering three new user experience metrics.

Hence, these updates strengthen Google’s existing user experience signals including things like mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, the requirement of HTTPS and no intrusive interstitials.

They’ve also even suggested that they’re going to add visual indicators to their search engine results pages, for pages that have great experience scores which are big.

So this is likely not only just going to affect your rankings but also your organic click-through rates as well.

This article will walk you through these three new Google core web vitals that they’re introducing into their algorithm.

1. Largest Contentful Paint

The largest contentful paint means loading performance referring to the largest image or text block that is evident in view on a page. It concludes when the main part of the content has rendered on the screen. In general, Google urges that websites must have an LCP that befalls within the opening 2.5 seconds of your webpage starting to load.

2. Cumulative Layout Shift

The second big metric they’re going to be looking at is the cumulative layout shift. This is the visual stability that’s covering how the elements in the viewport progress as your page loads.

For instance, if your visitor tries to click on a link and it shifts as they sometimes do. Websites with excellent page experience must strive for a CSL score of less than 0.1.

3. First Input Delay

First input delay is the last metric of Google’s algorithm. This determines to cover interactivity on your web page. It estimates the time when somebody engages with your website. For instance, doing something like a button click or scrolling through the page, be until the site begins responding. This latency can be the outcome of a browser working on other chores such as loading other parts of a web page. Maybe it’s loading other analytic scripts in the background that are slowing things down.

So in order to have a quality page experience, your site should strive to have a score of fewer than 100 milliseconds.

So what’s staying the same here?

Previously the primary metrics of focus from google’s algorithm were in these four categories.

Mobile Friendliness

If your website and its landing pages perform well on mobile phones then google’s mobile-first indexing would penalize those that do not so that’s very important. We know that we’ve been doing that for a while now. Hence, your website needs to be mobile-friendly. If its landing pages perform well on mobile phones, Google’s mobile-first indexing penalizes those that do not perform well on mobile.

Safe Browsing

If your website isn’t using deceptive practices such as malware used on the sites.

First of all, one should not use malware or deceptive methods to rank one’s website high. If Google detects any malpractice, it will penalise your website. You always don’t allow cracks in your web security where hackers could potentially exploit at the expense of your site visitors.

HTTPS

It ensures that you’re using an SSL secure socket layer to make your website safe which is kind of along the lines of safe browsing.

No Intrusive Instant Interstitials

If your website doesn’t use pop-ups or other types of content that block your web page content that your visitor expects or that they’re looking for.

So it needs to be easy, it needs to make sense.

Those are the four core elements that we’ve known about up to this point. With the addition of Google’s three new web vitals starting next month, we’re now going to have seven key signals that we need to monitor.

So how do we prepare for this?

Right now it’s difficult to estimate precisely how much influence all of these signals are going to have on your website.

But if Google’s historic approach to these algorithm changes, the page experience update is likely going to have a significant impact on rankings.

If you know that your site currently is outdated, using legacy versions of any platforms are slow, you likely need to make some updates. Usually, a good rule of thumb is that your website requires to be redesigned every three years to keep up with the trends and sustain web patterns for both the technological stack side to the user experience elements for search engines like Google.

Pro Tip:

After the launch or after google’s algorithm release, make sure to utilize the tool called google search console to monitor the changes. They’ve even built a report there called core web vitals that will notify you of any errors on your website in these seven different categories.

Wrapping Up

User experience is getting more important day by day. Google cares about people who love a particular website and ranks that site high.

If your website has poor user experience, Google will neglect your website and leave you deprived of high rank.

Just like any algorithm update Google does, assume to detect multiple revisions over time. As they discover, they adjust to make their algorithms more powerful over time.

But what is different about this update is you have advanced notification, which is excellent. So, take the chance and repair any usability problems you may have.