Free Tips To Save Your SEO!

The Google-World-of-Algorithms is a perpetual evolution machine. Understanding and accepting that as an ongoing experience is essential to maintain your position on the SEO Curve … that means maintaining and enhancing your Google rankings.

So, we are less than 60 days away from a new ranking factor that measures users’ page experience on your website. The three measurement-metrics are called the Web Vitals:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay, and (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Together, they are the “three-legged stool” of support for Google’s page experience update … performance, responsiveness and visual stability.  These additions to Google’s existing algorithms will be launched in May of this year. That means time is of the essence to prepare and capitalize on the updates plus protect your SEO competitive advantage.

As a quick look in the SEO rear-view mirror, optimizing the performance of websites was essentially a mission to optimize for speed in content loading times to boost conversion rates. While both objectives remain critical, each is now a part of the user-experience equation. Google now seeks to define and measure a more elusive - even abstract - factor in determining ideal optimizations … how a user experiences those enhancements.

According to Google, “Great page experiences enable people to get more done and engage more deeply; in contrast, a bad page experience could stand in the way of a person being able to find the valuable information on a page.”

Web Vitals in Profile

OK, now back to the Web Vitals … performance, responsiveness and visual stability with a bit more detail.

The “Readers Digest” explanation comes down to:

Performance … the users’ feel of speed that content loads appear on screen

Responsiveness … speed of page reaction to user input

Visual stability … ideally content doesn’t move around on the screen while loading

A more robust description includes:

• LCP, or Largest Contentful Paint: This metric tells how long it takes for the largest content element to load, e.g. an image or a block of text. High marks are earned when users feel that the site loads fast. In contrast, a slow site yields visitor frustration.
• FID, or First Input Delay: The first interaction with the site by a user is the “moment-of-truth” in measuring how long it takes the browser to respond. For instance, this may be triggered by clicking a button. A feeling that the site is quick to react earns a positive user experience. Once again, slow equals frustration.
• CLS, or Cumulative Layout Shift: Talk about user frustrations … click a button and a slow-loading ad pops up rather than the expected content. This new metric measures the percentage of the screen affected by stuff jumping around on the screen.

So, these new metrics will be combined with existing experience-ranking factors including:

• Mobile-friendliness
• HTTPS: url demonstrates a secure connection
• Interstitial use: blocking annoying pop-ups
• Safe browsing … harmless for visitors

Combined with the new real-world, user-centered metrics, these factors take into account everything a user experiences on a website to try to come up with an all-inclusive profile of the performance of your site.

Takeaways

Driving visitors to your website is an admirable goal … but not productive if the visit does not convert to one or another of your desired call-to-actions (CTA). To ensure conversion success, be sure to stay current with the latest Google algorithms … the newest about to be deployed in May.

A focused, continuing effort to optimize your local SEO is critical.

Now your choices are do-it-yourself or invest in a third-party, professional website design agency and SEO service for assistance. It is likely that you are already wearing several hats as a business owner and adding yet another marketing responsibility is probably not an option. So, an excellent guiding principle is found in the old saying, “Don’t Try This at Home!”

Why not rely on both an SEO resource plus your web design agency to successfully tackle these jobs?

Schedule An Appointment With Us Today To Discuss Your SEO Goals!