That’s roughly a year after the company first announced the update, and gives us another six months to prepare for it. In short, Google will highlight search results that have a great page experience and could probably become a ranking factor. Google said you may see these icons and labels in the search results soon. The update will take expected user experience into consideration for ranking in search results.
What is Page Experience?
To understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page, Google will evaluate a set of signals. This includes existing Google Search signals, such as mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitial guidelines. It also includes metrics in Google’s Web Vitals that take into consideration a site’s loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
How to prepare for the Page Experience update
For site owners and others, understanding these signals and making the necessary changes should be a priority. Among the steps to take include optimizing for mobile and improving page speeds, CTAs, and alt text for images.
You can start preparing now for user experience to become a ranking factor. The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is an excellent place to start getting a sense of how your site is performing in these areas. Alternatively, you can make use of the PageSpeed Insights tool by Google (which is a part of our SEO Audit) to understand how your site stacks up.
How are we helping our clients with the Page Experience update?
To cope up with the update, we are already doing the following things for our clients:
- Implementing search-friendly alt texts for images while doing on-page optimization of your website.
- Implementing relevant schema tags on the website.
We have also updated our SEO Audit Reports to bring back the Mobile and Desktop Page Speed Insights sections, which are a critical part of improving the Page Speed experience for users. In addition, our Audit also shows the Website HTTPS (secure website) status, which is a critical ranking factor in relation to this update.
Showing this to your clients presents a lucrative opportunity for you to upsell add-on services like “mobile friendly optimization,” “improving page load speed,” “making website secure,” “CTA optimization,” “landing page optimization,” etc. If you’re interested, our team can discuss further on how to best provide these services to your clients at a minimal cost.