Although this page experience algorithm change will only roll out in 2021, Google is giving people the insight before it is implemented.
And this is because of the covid 19 pandemic, they are informing us to do the necessary changes before hand that you don't loose website traffic when the algorithm change is rolled out.
The effect of the page experience and how to prepare for it;
Page Experience
In Google’s own words, here is what it means…
The page experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page.
Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.
In other words, they are looking for how satisfying the users is on your website.
There is some web pages that is tricking people when they want to leave that card, that they end up buying the product that they did not want.
As the user was trying to click on “No, go back”, but because an install bar popup up at the top, it pushed
the whole page down and caused the user to accidentally click on “Yes, place my order.”
The purpose of this update is to make sure that sites that rank at the top aren’t creating experiences that users hate.
The simplest way to think about this update is that user-friendly sites will rank higher than sites that aren’t user friendly.
But this change is the start of a big shift in SEO.
As your brand grows so will your SEO traffic.
But that is old news, that’s been part of Google’s algorithm for years now.
Here is the thing though, most sites don’t have large brands and Google knows that. So, if you don’t have one, you can still rank.
At my ad agency, when we look at our clients and their growth over time, only 4% have large well-known brands. The other 96% are still seeing traffic growth.
What Google is doing is adapting its algorithm to more closely align with the mission of showing the sites first that users love the most.
And yes, brand queries are one of the ways they can do this, but user experience is another metric.
Over the next few years, I bet you will see many algorithm updates focusing on user experience.
So how do you optimize your user experience?
It starts with each page If you look at the original article Google posted about the future algorithm change, they emphasize “page experience” or “website experience.”
It doesn’t mean that your whole website shouldn’t have a good user experience, but instead, I bet they are going to focus on their algorithm from a page-level basis.
Because if you have a few pages on your websites that have a poor experience, but the rest are good, it wouldn’t make sense for Google to reduce
the rankings of your whole site, especially if many of your pages provide a much better experience than your competition.
Here’s how you optimize your user experience:
Step #1: Optimize your speed and reduce 400 errors
The faster your website loads, the better experience you’ll have.
Do a website audit to determine all the issues that your visitors is experiencing.
The website audit should also include the loading speed for desktops and mobile devices. As Google is using the attribute of mobile first, meaning if your websites
mobile loading speed is within 3 seconds, that you have a great loading website speed.
Step #2: Compare your experience to your competitions’
You may think you have an amazing user experience, but how does it stake up to your competition?
Conducting a website audit on your competitors website will indicate their popular pages and the SEO perspective that make them rank higher. Look at their SEO
trafic, as this is an indicator where your website can improve. Go through all their pages and look at the user experience on each page.
What is it that they are doing? How does their content quality compare to yours? What are the differences between their website compared to yours?
Find on the audit report all of the keywords each page ranks for. When evaluating your competition’s user experience, keep in mind how they are delighting people
who search for any of those keywords. This will give you an idea of what you need to do as well.
But your goal shouldn’t be to match your competition, it should be to beat your competition.
Step #3: Analyze your design
Remember the graphic I mentioned above of what Google doesn’t want? Where the user tried to click on “No, go back” instead of “Yes, place my order” due to design issues.
In most cases you won’t have that issue, but you will have other usability issues. Using a good website auditing tool will guide you on how to improve your website.
When you correct all the issues that the audit is indicating as concerns, you will find that your visitors is delighted, and you might find that after the
algorithm change that there is more visitors that is organically vising your website.
Leave a comment below as we would love to hear from you.
