Site Owners Now Know How Long They Have to Prepare Their Website
Back in June, we first heard word on how users’ page experience was going to become a ranking factor. And for what seems to be the first time ever, we are being given a set date that allows webmasters to have ample time to prepare their sites so they are not greatly impacted by the update.
So mark your calendars, as we recently learned the official rollout of this update will begin May 2021.
What’s Else Is Coming: Labels in Search Results
Google’s formal announcement also included some new information around “visual indicators” that may also be rolled out at the same time in connection to the user experience ranking factor. It stated:
“We believe that providing information about the quality of a web page’s experience can be helpful to users in choosing the search result that they want to visit. On results, the snippet or image preview helps provide topical context for users to know what information a page can provide. Visual indicators on the results are another way to do the same, and we are working on one that identifies pages that have met all of the page experience criteria. We plan to test this soon and if the testing is successful, it will launch in May 2021 and we’ll share more details on the progress of this in the coming months.”
If this feature goes live, it could be brutal to many websites as users may refrain from clicking on websites in SERPs (search engine result pages) that display low scores.
According to Search Engine Land, labels for AMP, slow loading, and mobile-friendliness have already been tested in the past.
High-Level Tips to Enhance Your Page Experience
The best way to prepare is to use the results from the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console, and here are some takeaways from what we have seen in those reports:
- Ensure your website is secure with an SSL certificate
- Remove unused third-party codes and CSS
- Resize and optimize your images to be in JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, or WebP format
- Consider adding a lazy loading plugin or add on
- Invest in a cache plugin or add on (this may also be available from your hosting provider)
- Avoid multiple page redirects
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and compatible across various devices
You can also use Google’s PageSpeed Insights test to get more ways you can improve the individual pages on your site.
Related Articles
- 3 Changes to Improve User Experience on Your Site Today
- Google Launched Analytics 4 – Is It Worth the Switch?
- How to Prepare for Mobile-First Indexing
- Here Is How You Can Improve Your Site Speed
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