Google Page Experience Update 2021

 Google Page Experience Update 2021

So, after impatiently waiting for the rollout of the Google page experience update, how’s your website doing? Wait, don’t tell me you are still holding on to your AMP badge icon! No way!

Well, if you happened to be on sabbatical or maybe on online media detox, don’t worry. We have got you covered.

Site owners and SEOs were pretty excited and tensed altogether when Google announced the rollout of the new algorithm. Why wouldn’t you? Every time they make changes, things seem to go back to square one, or is it?

Well, not really! At least not this time. 

What are the stats you commonly monitor on your website? Speed? Design? Reach? Connection with your audience?

As part of Google page experience rollout, the update includes several categories:

1. Core Web Vitals:
1. LCP or largest contentful paint
2. FID or first input delay 
3. CLS or cumulative layout shift
1. Bonus: Top stories carousel feature on Google Search - they include news content, as long as it meets the Google News Policies.
2. Mobile friendly
3. HTTPS security
4. No intrusive interstitials

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/images/volt-post-graphic-designed.png

Nothing much has changed. If you maintain your website, you must know the importance of loading time, mobile-friendliness, secure browsing, and intrusive interstitials in ranking. In principle, it’s the same, so relax.

It’s all about user experience now. Let’s dissect the changes.

CORE WEB VITALS

With the new Core Web Vitals, you can easily monitor your website performance based on loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. It’s all about user experience via a user interface (UI). 

To give your audience a good user experience, LCP should load the largest block of your content within 2.5 seconds after the click. Your FID measures your site interactivity, which means your response time should be lower than 100 milliseconds after the click. For layout stability, you should keep your CLS of 0.1. It means the content blocks should not move much as the page loads.

Find the new metrics below with corresponding thresholds:

Source: https://web.dev/vitals/

Being on the move, more and more customers and target audiences may access your website using their mobile phones or tablets.

Earlier, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) was a deal-breaker for every website. By exploiting HTML, they can load your web pages almost instantly, that too,   

MOBILE FRIENDLY

More than half of the website visitors come from mobile traffic. In fact, in some countries, most internet searches come from mobile devices. It must be the very reason why Google focuses on the mobile user’s good browsing experience. Mobile is the future of the internet. 

Chances are, your customers are using mobile phones too. So make sure that your website works well across mobile devices and tablets as much as it does on desktop. 

Your site is mobile-friendly according to its ability to shrink the desktop version to fit into mobile screens. You might want to check website responsiveness, adaptive design, and responsive design. 

In the end, the manner your website loads content on mobile devices can make it or break it. Let us put ourselves in your customer’s shoes. What are we looking for on a website? 

Right.

It is the same as what they are looking for from yours.

HTTPS

HTTPS is the secured version of HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). What is the difference, you may ask? HTTPS is using HTTP with TLS (Transport Layer Security), which means, when your website visitors submit the request, it passes through the encryption process. No one can peak in, eavesdrop, or intercept until it reaches the destination. It is secured.  

TLS provides three layers of security

•  Encryption
• Data Integrity
• Authentication

To ensure that your site complies with HTTPS, you can secure a certification from a reliable and trustworthy certificate authority (CA). They usually offer technical support as well. You have three options to choose from:

• Single certificate - for one secured connection (for example, www.yoursite.com). 
• Multi-domain certificate - is for more than one secured domain name (for example, www.yoursite.com, www.yourcompany.com, www.onlineshop.com). 
• Wildcard certificate - for a unique subdomain address (www.a.yoursite.com or www.z.onlineshop.com).

If you are using Chrome browser (or any other browser), you may get a prompt every once in a while when you visit an HTTP-run domain. By default, Chrome marked them as not secure. 

Although you have an option to migrate from HTTP to HTTPS, you might lose some of your numbers. Every movement and migration is considered a new domain name in Google.  

Before we move to the next category, let me remind you that this is for user experience, But you might want to verify with your SEO champion if your site is crawlable. Make sure Google can crawl and index your site. Ranking, remember? 

INTRUSIVE INTERSTITIALS

So, what are intrusive interstitials? Simply put, those are the annoying popup ads that nearly cover your mobile screen or half of your desktop monitor. Interstitials can surely give your audience a bad user experience. 

Source:https://cdn.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/google-examples.png

However, this is nothing new. Google introduced it in 2016 and started becoming a ranking factor in 2017 when the mobile revolution became a fad. Let’s say you visited a website, and ads keep popping in. What will you do? Close the browser and leave the site forever? Exactly! It defeats the purpose of the site visit. Some interstitials do not even have an option to close. For some, you can skip after watching the ad for 15-30 seconds. Seriously, do we have all those time to spare every time popup ads come? NO! So, why are we getting all these popups again? Oh, because companies get massive exposure. Whether we like it or not, when interstitials popup, users will become aware of the product, services, or whatever existing promotion there is. In short, they get significant clicks as well. They may annoy some users that count as “not their target audience,” but they eventually get customers in the process. What happens now? The new Google Page Experience Update is an entire package. If you want to reach your customers and lead them back to your site, you might want to consider full compliance. There are advantages. If you optimize your website according to the new ranking metrics, it is lightweight. Because it promotes a good user experience, it can potentially reduce your bounce rate, increase your conversion, and increase your revenue. It’s a win-win situation. The first 10 seconds are crucial. That’s your window to convert your site visitor to paying customers, your call! If you have any comments or suggestions regarding this article, please hit the comment button.