Google's June 2021 Page Experience & Core Web Vitals SEO Algorithm Update

Thursday, 13 May 2021 12:54

Google's June 2021 Page Experience & Core Web Vitals SEO Algorithm Update

Guest Opinion: Business owners have always tried to solve this biggest question – “How does Google determine if a company website is worthy enough to be on its number one page for search ranking?” Many factors like the actual web content and its relevancy had made it easier to understand the ranking system. But now, the experience that users have when they load your webpage is going to become more important than ever.

Google is ready to gradually launch its Page Experience Algorithm Update with Core Web Vitals become ranking signals from mid-June. But it will not come in full force in search rankings until the end of August. This carefully crafted update will highlight pages that offer exceptional user experiences.

Another interesting part of Google core update will have to be that Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) will no longer act as a benchmark for showing results on its Top Stories carousel feature. It will index websites that meet the Google News policies. Also, Google Search will no longer use the AMP badge icon. Hence, AMP content will have no indication once the page experience update starts to roll out later.

But Google said that websites should not expect drastic changes. The page experience will still remain one of many factors that their systems will take into account.

Gradual Rollout of Google's June 2021 Update

The search giant has been considerate to web publishers and site owners by rolling the Google core update gradually. They wanted to ensure that everyone has some time to implement the changes and monitor the impact of the update or any unexpected issues. It will prove to be a good heads-up for site owners to make refinements to their website with page experience in mind.

This is going to be great news for developers and webmasters who might get that extra time to ensure that their pages are up to mark as by Google’s standards. This additional time will surely allow them to sort everything out.

What Makes This Update So Important?

If we try to understand the motive of this core update carefully, we will see that Google Search has really put users on its top priority. It seems to be on a mission to adapt its new Google core algorithm update in a way such that those sites feature first that users love the most. This new algorithm is really taking it one step ahead. It will ensure that sites that rank at the highest are not creating experiences that users do not like.

There is no doubt that that page experience will have a huge part in the site's visibility. It will possibly become the determining factor between two similar websites. 

A lot of site owners are believing that this is going to be a radical change and the start of a big shift in SEO. This will also lead to brand queries (the number of users who search for your brand name on Google and click on your website) impacting Google search rankings.

Combining New Page Experience with Core Web Vitals

For technical SEO specialists and web developers who work on prioritising the user, the page experience principles are not a surprise. In the past, page experience was seen as a combination of various factors that Google used to evaluate the site. The factors were already considered with SEO and included things such as page speed, mobility, page speed, interactivity, and much more.

But now, a dedicated Page Experience Report is going to be available in the Search Console which will combine the Core Web Vitals report with other page experience signals like:

• Mobile usability: A URL should not possess any mobile usability errors in order to qualify for good mobile usability.
• Security issues: Any kind of security issues will have disqualification all URLs on that site
• HTTPS usage: A page should have served over HTTPS and not HTTP to become eligible for a good page experience.
• Ad Experience: A site must not contain those advertising techniques which can be interrupting, distracting, or hampering a good user experience.

What Are Core Web Vitals and How They Perform as Ranking Factor?

Google introduced “Core Web Vitals” as a benchmark to user-centric metrics that help quantify key features of the user page experience. They help in measuring varied dimensions of web serviceability such as responsiveness, interactivity, content relevancy, and load time.

Precisely, below mentioned have made the cut as the Core Web Vitals:

• Largest Contentful Paint: This talks about the time a page will take to load its main content. It should be ideally 2.5 seconds or quicker.

• First Input Delay: It focuses on the time taken by a page to load and become interactive. The ideal measurement should be lesser than 100 ms.
• Cumulative Layout Shift: The emphasis on the amount of unexpected layout shift that occurs in the visual page content. The ideal measurement should be less than 0.1.

These signals will help to measure user’s experience and interaction with the page. While these signals are important for all websites in general, they are especially critical in E-commerce SEO.

What Can Be Done to Prepare for The June Algorithm Update?

It is not a new fact that every time Google updates its algorithm, site owners have to work on many features regarding their websites. Like with the newest Google Core Update June 2021, one will have to pay attention to the experience that your customers are having on the website.

If you have not fully prepared for this Google update, this is the ideal time to gear up and make adjustments. For many technical SEO specialists, Google’s update for this page ranking algorithm may seem a strenuous job. Many companies might even think to hire an  SEO Sydney agency to revamp their websites and create online content. Regardless of the type of industry, you are working in, it is always vital to stay up to date with any algorithm update.

Google has recommended AMP as a cost-effective way to optimise your site for the page experience signal. After the grand announcement that Google has incorporated Core Web Vitals into the ranking algorithm, new measurement capabilities have been added to many of its existing tools. Here are a few tools that SEO Specialists and webmasters can use to evaluate your readiness for the Google page experience update.

Search Console

Search Console will now have a detailed Core Web Vitals report to help web developers and site owners assess the page performance throughout the website. This report will identify those pages that demand immediate attention and group their performance by metric type, status, and groups of similar web pages. But be aware that with this report, URLs can be omitted if they are unable to display a minimal amount of reporting data.

PageSpeed Insights

As the name suggests, PageSpeed Insights will perform a full X-ray of your page’s content. It will then deliver suggestions on how you can improve the speed of your page.

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is an extremely useful professional tool available for site developers. It helps to analyse your site performance and carry additional audits. It can be readily used as an open-source package or as a plugin with web browsers like Firefox and Chrome. This automated auditing tool is capable to improve the user’s experience on the sites.

Chrome DevTools

Chrome DevTools is another interesting tool to help site SEO strategists and site owners discover and fix any visual instability issues that may lead to Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). If you want to view the particulars in the Summary tab, you would just have to select the Layout Shift. If "you wish to visualise where exactly the shift took place, gradually hover your cursor over the “Moved from” and “Moved to” fields.

Chrome UX Report

Popularly known as CrUX, it focuses on the vast public dataset of real end-user experience on “n” number of websites. The Chrome UX report will measure field versions for all the Core Web Vitals. This will provide you with actual-world data instead of lab data.

Webpagetest.org

This site performs interesting work to keeps things simple or spices them up with advanced testing options (like content blocking, video capture, and more).

Summary

It is extremely essential that your site developers, SEO team, and content creators become proactive. They should collaboratively chalk out a plan to prepare your site for this change.

The tools above can greatly benefit companies who are already thinking about how they can improve their website user experience. Before the ranking rollout starts in mid-June 2021, Google had provided companies valid time to analyse their websites and shift focus on customer interests.

Every business’s vision should be to build a web ecosystem that users love and share. The right tools and resources are already available in the market. One just needs to get on this bandwagon and use them to build great user-friendly websites, which will ultimately always will the race for Organic traffic.

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