Google has always made it clear throughout all of its services that Google rewards its advertisers who give Google’s customers a good experience. With Google ads this is done through quality score reducing your bid price and within the organic search results it is your pages rank that changes.
Over the last couple of years we have seen through Google webmaster tools, the system in which we can manage and see data on our Organic visibility, tools like page load speed and mobile friendliness being introduced as Google starts to use these elements more and more in its organic ranking algorithm.
Google at the end of May has let it drop that it is going to release a major update next year. We normally don’t get advanced notice of an update so I am thinking that this might be a big one. This update is around a new set of metrics Google is launching around responsiveness, visibility and stability called Core Web Vitals. I quote from Google ‘Search ranking change that incorporates these page experience metrics”
So what does this actually mean. Well first of all we are told not to panic. These updates will not be rolled out till next year and we will be given 6 months notice. Part of this makes me worry more I’ve never been given 6 months notice of a Google SEO update … gulp.
The new term that is going to be the center of SEO is “page experience signal”
The following is included in this new signal.
Mobile Friendliness – can your content be accessed on a mobile device
Safe-browsing – no malware, deceptive pages, harmful downloads
HTTPS – if you are not https you don’t deserve to be ranked
Pop Ups – if you are using intrusive pop ups this will be a negative mark against you
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – This is the time take for the pages main content to load (this should be less than 2.5 seconds)
First Input delay – This is a masseuse of the load time of the first set of pixels and how quickly they can be interacted with. (less at 0.1 second)
Cumulative Layout Shift – This is a real bug bear of time. It is when the button or calls to action move as the page loads.
There are a whole load of free tests and reports to check to see your site is up to speed. We will linke all of these below:
Measure and report LCP LCP, FID, and CLS.
Security Issues report. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044101
There is also going to be a small but significant update for the mobile top stories feature is that AMP is not going to be necessary. We are going to keep using this markup though.