Don’t panic! Google Page Experience Update will take place in 2021. You have more than enough time to do the changes to your website.
But still, start to think about it as this is exactly why Google gave us this information on time. Nobody wants to lose traffic on the website.
Google Page Experience Update!? What is that anyway?
Page experience is something you buy in the grocery store for 10 EUR. Or maybe not…
Definition from Google is the following: “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 short, it is about how a user will understand (experience) a specific web page. It makes sense if you think about the user experience and how important it is.
Nobody likes websites that are not practical to use. If the buttons are not symmetrical or even worse they intend to move on the screen when they should not. All those things do not go together with a good user experience. Those types of websites will not rank well in the future.
Website optimization vs. page optimization
Pay good attention to this. We are talking about page experience, not just the website experience. You have to optimize every page on your website. It is crucial.
This is something Google was already talking about. In the future, they will look more for page optimization.
Google Page Experience Update should benefit the ones doing the optimization continuously. If you have a smaller number of pages that are not very user-friendly, and the rest is OK, this should not be the problem.
Google will not punish your whole site with a bad ranking. It does not make sense because most of your other pages provide good value.
Optimizing the user experience
- Website loading speed and broken pages.
Loading speed is becoming more and more important today. One of the reasons for that is because people use mobile phones to browse the internet.
Are visitors always connected to a stable internet connection? No, they are not. Mobile internet is quite often unstable and simply not fast enough. You do not want your site to load in 10 seconds. The aim is under three, ideally one or two seconds of loading time.
You can easily check the loading speed with any of the online tools. Be creative and go google, try to use one of the proven websites for that. By doing that you can also scan your website for broken pages. Again, there are many free tools around.
I often use Ubersuggest but it is not the only one. However, this tool can do some very nice things within the free plan. Scan your website for broken pages and errors and if you have them-fix it. Do the necessary redirects and fix those errors. Broken pages create a bad user experience.
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Check your competitors and apply reverse engineering
Is your website the best in the industry? Probably not. Check the sites in your niche, what are they doing better?
Most of those tools that you are using to scan your website you can also use to check other sites. Use online tools and see how better websites perform, on what level is their user experience. It is never too late to learn.
Do the reverse engineering, dismantle the technical success of other websites, and apply to your pages. Analyze the most viewed pages of good-performing websites.
What are they offering to the visitors? Is the content better? Is it something else? There is much information flying around if you look at all the details such as keywords, topics, text formatting, linking, etc.
The most important thing; try to beat them! By beating competition you get in front of them.
- Usability issues
What the hell is that? When the visitor is experiencing some problems with the interface (landing page), then we are talking about the usability issue. If you want to click on a specific button or a link, but the graphic is not precise enough, it is a usability issue. Buttons are moving (skipping) on the screen, again the same problem.
Issues with the design of the page are a serious problem for the users. You can track that by using a heatmap. There are many free tools around which you can use. One of the most popular ones is Crazy Egg. Learn what the user is clicking the most and where do they spend time.
Conclusion
Google is focusing more on the user experience but what is new here? Nothing much except the fact they will do it more intensely than before. But wait… Isn’t that update planned for 2021? Yes!
We have more than enough time to prepare everything before the Google Page Experience Update. Use the advice here, and besides that, take advantage of the free SEO tools.
