For any businesses wanting their website to rank highly in Google, you will soon need a significant focus on page experience to achieve these top spots. From May next year, page experience signals will be included in Google Search rankings to ensure that Google users have the ‘most helpful and enjoyable experiences from the web’.
Google has always been dedicated to a great user experience for anyone using the search engine, it wants to provide people with the most relevant results and direct them to a web page that gives them the answer to their query or search.
If we look back at previous changes to signals that inform Google’s algorithm, such as ensuring sites are mobile responsive, that they load quickly and penalising sites with irrelevant links and rewarding sites with relevant ones, all of which will work towards identifying a quality site based on a user’s search query.
The new page experience signals will bring a number of these together, specifically mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security and intrusive interstitial guidelines (pop-ups). But Google plans on adding to these signals on a yearly basis.
The changes themselves were announced in May of this year, with the recent announcement that their introduction has been pushed back to May of next year. Since May, Google has seen a 70% increase in the number of uses taking advantage of its tools, specifically aimed to assess a site’s user experience. These include Lighthouse, Page Speed Insights and Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report.
Alongside the changes, Google will also be testing a visual indicator on search results, that will highlight pages that provide a great user experience. Therefore, for businesses looking to rank highly, site experience must become one of the top priorities over the coming months.
For the team at Entyce, user experience plays an integral role in both our SEO work and web development. In our 12 years in business, we have adapted and enhanced our services to reflect the ever-changing nature of Google Algorithms, and have supported our clients in reaching top rankings.
With these changes, our services will continue to incorporate and consider user experience at every stage of a web project, as well as ongoing work with a site. This will ensure sites are mobile responsive and secure, speed is optimised and users are able to seamlessly browse the site.
Do you want to learn more about the services we provide clients to get them ranking in those prestigious top spots? Contact us today.