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In May of 2020, Google announced that they would be updating the algorithm to incorporated Page Experience into the signals. Google has been working on a set of Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics related to site speed, site responsiveness, and the visual stability of a website.

The goal here is to provide a look into the overall quality of a user’s experience on a particular website.

Due to COVID-19, however, Google has decided to hold off on the algorithm update until May 2021 and give site owners notice and time to update their websites before the update takes effect.

Page Experience Signal

The new page experience signal will measure the quality of a user’s experience with a particular website. Through research and data, Google has concluded that users prefer websites with a great experience and therefore has decided to include a metric that represents the user experience.

Have you ever accidentally clicked on a button because the site content loaded late and push the content further down the page? Well, now there is a set of metrics to identify a good or bad user experience, and Google refers to this as “Core Web Vitals.”

 

 

How to Prepare for the 2021 Google Algorithm Update

To prepare for the May 2021 Google Algorithm update, we recommend addressing the usual areas of optimization, including meta tags, content, and backlinks. However, in addition to these standard SEO optimizations, we also recommend focusing on page speed, and of course, site experience.

What we mean by site experience is to optimize page speed, (i.e. image size, image file type, etc.) mobile-friendliness (i.e. make sure your website is 100% built for the mobile experience), make sure you have an SSL certificate, and then make sure you don’t have any intrusive interstitials.

Here is an image from Google which shows which metrics will be included in the search signals for page experience:

Page Experience Algorithm Update

To Sum It All Up

Google believes that the website experience will only get better over time and by incorporating these signals into the Google algorithm, they will more accurately rank the websites within the search engine results page.

Do you have a question that was not answered above? Or would you like to speak with our search engine optimization team about the May 2021 Google algorithm update? Reach out to us by filling out a free consultation form!

Ricky Weiss
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