Google has recently confirmed that the ‘page experience’ signals in ranking will roll out in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine ‘core web vitals’ with their existing search signals. If you aren’t paying attention to these new page experience metrics, you’ll need to take action to ensure that your competition doesn’t start stealing your position in SERPs in 2021.
What do we already know?
We already know that Google looks for the following factors when determining the quality of your ‘page experience’ for visitors.
- Mobile friendly – the page must be optimised for mobile devices
- HTTPS – your page must be secure
- Safe-browsing – the page can’t contain any malicious software or misleading content
- No intrusive interstitials – your page can’t contain any content that covers the primary content
If all of these are high quality, your dating site will achieve a higher quality score and higher ranking in SERPs (which also brings down your CPCs).
Combined with these known signals, from May 2021, Google will also be ranking your pages after considering your page’s…
…Core Web Vitals!
It’s more than likely that your landing pages are adhering to best practice in all of the factors mentioned above, but are your pages ready to be ranked based on core web vitals? If they’re not, they need to be.
What are they?
Core web vitals is a page experience metric from Google to determine what type of experience a visitor gets when they land on your page.
It focuses on page load speed, elements of interactivity (this is how your website responds to a user’s input) and visual stability as content loads (so a visitor doesn’t accidentally tap the wrong button when it annoyingly shifts under their finger).
Having all of these in check keeps visitors engaged and removes friction so people are less likely to bounce.
What’s next…
Last May, Google announced that ‘page experience’ signals would soon be included in Google Search ranking. This will roll out in May 2021.
They have confirmed that not only will they consider the page experience factors that we already know (and love) including mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines, they will also include core web vitals.
This means that before May 2021, you will need to ensure your core web vitals get some TLC, as Google will take them into consideration when ranking your site in SERPs.
Webmasters have already started preparing for this – have you?
Since May’s announcement Google has reported a 70% increase in people engaging with page speed tools, such as PageSpeed Insights, and many site owners using Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report to identify opportunities for improvement.
In Summary
While we spend a lot of time focusing on optimising keywords, mobile experience and back links to improve our quality scores and rankings, focus needs to shift towards core web vitals before May 2021.
We don’t know how much of an impact core web vitals will have on our ranks, but we do know that Google is paying a lot more attention to on-page experience. This goes hand in hand with SEO and it can’t be ignored if you want to beat your competition and keep your rankings.
The good news is you may not even have to do anything differently if you’re already providing a high-quality web experience for your traffic.
Next week, we’ll be sharing more detail about Google’s core web vitals and how you can improve them ahead of their algorithm in 2021.