If you have followed Google’s announcements, you may have heard about their new approach to ranking page experience. The main purpose of this update is for Google to better understand how effective your webpage will be and how it will be perceived by users. They have set a rollout date for this month. This means you have a few months to prepare for probably one of the biggest search trends of the year. As SEO recruiters, we have taken the initiative to learn how this new approach will affect your rankings and what you need to know going forward.
According to Business to Community, “The update combines several ranking factors into one-page experience signal, allowing Google to measure the quality of experience provided by individual pages and websites.” Here is what the top marketing executive search agency knows about page experience algorithms now.
Marketing Executive Search Agency Highlights Changes In Google’s Page Experience Algorithm:
Most top marketing executives are familiar with the four signals Google has been using for page experience. To reiterate, each website and webpage must be mobile-friendly, have safe browsing, HTTPS secured, and no intrusive interstitials. Optimizing these key four signals has been crucial to every marketer’s SEO strategy. This will not change.
What has changed is the core web vitals, which consist of loading, interactivity, and visual stability. While this is also not a new concept, SEO recruiters recommend rethinking the way you optimize for them.
Therefore, before you can begin strategizing, you need to figure out where you stand. Here is a report you can use to determine the performance of your website/page. The report breaks down 3 main metrics. Those metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Each of these is what Google will use to measure the website’s performance.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
LCP measures the largest image, video, or text block loading time visible above the fold. It is recommended that the page loading time occurs within the first 2.5 seconds. You can identify the LCP of a page using PageSpeed Insights which will give you the largest element. Some other obstacles marketing executive search agency suggests you look into are slow server response times and rendering-block JavaScript and CSS.
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay measures the time from when a user first interacts with your site (i.e. click a button), to the time when the browser can respond to that action. To ensure you are providing a good user experience, your FID needs to stay below 100 milliseconds.
Therefore, a great method to speed up the execution is splitting your code into smaller parts. You can then control what resources are being loaded onto the page and remove JavaScript code that is not being used.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative layout shift is an unexpected shift in web page components when the page is still loading that is not caused by user activity. To have the highest experience, Google suggests a maximum score of 0.1 or less.
Fortunately, this is one of the easiest fixes out of the three metrics. Here are some examples SEO recruiters have found and recommend you implement into your daily functions:
- Add all images with dimensions. Adding width and height helps the browser understand the intended layout of your webpage.
- Reserve space for ads and avoid placing ads near the top of the viewport.
- Avoid adding new content above existing content unless it helps with the user interaction.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, we won’t truly understand how big of an impact this new update will have on our marketing strategy until we have some time to access it. However, marketing executive search agency highly suggests you check within the first 90 days. Either way, great marketing professionals understand it is extremely important to be prepared regardless of how big or small the impact may cause. Fortunately, with the help of a solid marketing team, you should have no trouble making the changes necessary to stay ahead.
Author: Melissa Van Rossum