Google Finishes Launching Page Experience Update
- 10 September, 2021
- Jason Ferry
- Google SEO
Getting great Google SEO rankings in the search results can be a complex task, but it is perfectly doable. By complying with the Page Experience Update, Google SEO companies can ensure that they’ll get better rankings in the search engine results pages. Just this month, Google publicly announced that they have finished rolling out their Page Experience Update.
There was a muted response from the SEO community when Google made the announcement, which is quite odd since it is a big update, and site owners will have to pay more attention to it if they want to rank better.
Google Page Experience Ranking Signals
Google’s Page Experience ranking factors consist of four categories: Core Web Vitals (CWV), no intrusive interstitials, HTTPS, and mobile-friendly.
CWV has undergone several updates this year, and these changes help make the metrics fairer and more accurate. Those individual metrics comprising the CWV also received several updates, resulting in better website scores for many sites.
Google’s John Mueller recently clarified the seeming ban on intrusive interstitials. He said that online businesses and publishers should avoid using interstitials that block users from viewing the content when they first arrive on the site after clicking a result in search results. Such interstitials are objectionable and cause a poor user experience.
On 16 June 2021, Google Search Central made the announcement on their Twitter account, telling the community that they were slowly launching their Page Experience update. They added that Top Stories would start using the new signal shortly after. It also indicated that they would complete the update by the end of August 2021.
Just last week, Google replied to the old Twitter post, saying that page experience rollout is complete now. There were only a few responses and quote retweets compared to their first announcement. Some of the comments expressed a collective shrug from the worldwide SEO community.
Importance Of The Page Experience Update
It is true that relevance plays an essential role when it comes to boosting Google SEO rankings. Still, page experience factors are also very important.
Some site owners think that the Page Experience factors only serve as a slight push for them to improve their SEO, but the Page Experience ranking factors are real ranking factors, contrary to what they believe.
The Google Search Central page stated that if there are many pages that are similar in relevance, then Page Experience will be a more important factor in search visibility.
Some people also assumed that the CWV metric is a small and inconsequential factor. It could be due to the lack of impact from mobile-friendliness and HTTPS Page Experience factors. However, this is not the case if one tries to see the entire picture, considering all the ranking factors as a whole, in particular with the CWV.
In early August, Mueller posted on a Reddit thread, reassuring the SEO community that CWV is a significant ranking factor.
The Reddit post discussed CWV as relatively inconsequential, but Mueller said otherwise. He affirmed the truth that it does not replace relevance, but it is more than just a tie-breaker. He also said that it could be either easy or difficult to notice, depending on the website they are working on. He added that it’s part of an SEO’s role to look at all the possible optimisations and determine the factors that they should work on more.
Google keeps on releasing ranking factors that may be hard to grasp. For instance, everyone in the SEO community knows that links are important ranking signals, but not many can confidently separate the helpful links that boost rankings from the useless ones.
On the other hand, Page Experience ranking factors are different. Google has always been open and transparent when providing information about these ranking signals and even give helpful tips to improve scores.
Google has done a great job documenting their Page Experience ranking factors. Since Google SEO companies can find a lot of credible information about these ranking signals online, it makes sense to use these resources to improve Page Experience signals and get the top spot in the search results.
A Short History On Ranking Factors
In the early 2000s, Google used ranking factors tied to keywords to get a web page’s context. Some of the factors that helped the search engine rank sites are anchor text, keywords in headings and titles, number of links, and many more.
Many site owners acquired thousands of reciprocal links and did the necessary on-page SEO to rank at the top. However, all of this was before advanced machine learning, Natural Language Processing, and AI technologies existed.
With the new CWV factor, it is not surprising that many people doubt this new ranking signal. Some SEOs think it’s because Google downplays the true power of CWV as a ranking factor, with Mueller saying how relevance is a more important signal. But last month, Mueller made it clear to the SEO community that they should not take CWV lightly. He reminded SEOs that CWV is more than just a ranking signal because it affects a website’s usability after it ranks.
For instance, if a website gets more traffic because of other SEO efforts but their conversion rate is low, that traffic is not as useful compared to when it actually boosts the conversion rate. Usually, speed and user experience affect conversion rate, and CWV helps SEOs recognise and quantify common user annoyances.
It only means that CWV – which measures speed and user experience – and Page Experience are two important factors for helping a site achieve its fullest potential. Mueller mentioned conversion rates, but page speed can make ad impressions better as there will be a decrease in bounce rates when a site has a quality page experience.
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