SEO is an aspect of building an online presence that businesses everywhere can no longer overlook. Nowadays, good search engine optimization isn’t just about keywords and content. With Google’s new signal, Page Experience, businesses will have to take into consideration mobile optimization, website loading times, and secure browsing, among other things, as official ranking factors. This is everything you need to know about Page Experience in a nutshell.
It measures the overall quality of user experience
User experience isn’t just about content anymore, but how your website runs as a whole and whether or not it satisfies the customer viewing it.
It combines Core Web Vitals metrics
Existing signals consider metrics for a page’s mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, and HTTPS security. They also monitor whether guidelines such as those involving intrusive interstitials are being adhered to. Page Experience combines these signals with Core Web Vitals, which are a set of user-centred metrics vital to real-world experience aspects such as a page’s load time, how interactive it is, and whether it is visually stable.
For now, Core Web Vitals has been incorporated into Lighthouse and Google PageSpeed Insights, which are open-source tools that run technical website audits. Core Web Vitals are also being used to improve opportunities in its Search Console.
It will be applied to Search and Top Stories
It’s a given that Page Experience will be integrated into Google Search, but it will also allow pages that rate high enough to be featured in its Top Stories. AMP pages will still be available but will no longer be required for Top Story eligibility. Thus, publishers using AMP may have to rethink their strategies.
It is the new equivalent to high-quality content
If you’ve ever heard the saying “content is king”, it still inarguably is, as Search still prioritizes pages with the best information, regardless of whether a page’s other features are relatively subpar. In the end, page technicalities can never truly override the importance of sharing great content. However, multiple pages with similar content will now have to compete by upping their Page Experience. If you’re competing against brands publishing content that is very similar to yours, you can’t assume it’ll get you good rankings. After all, data shows that pages that load faster and are easier to navigate do rank better on Google.
It is only the first of more experience-related metrics
The best way to measure and understand page experiences is to continually incorporate new strategies on a yearly basis. This means that technical SEO may take over as the dominant form of SEO in the future. Though Page Experience isn’t expected to launch before 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google vows to announce its launch 6 months prior to its official date.
Conclusion
In the end, a winning page needs to publish excellent, valuable content while providing users with a smooth experience when it comes to overall navigation. If you haven’t yet done so, now is the time to take a closer look at every technical metric that defines your page.
Need a hand with your content marketing strategies in Ontario? We provide you with an all-in-one resource to work towards growing your business online!