Google Shares Tips On Checking Page Experience Factors

Online businesses and publishers must check if their website meets all the non-Core Web Vitals page experience factors to improve their SEO rankings and traffic. Google recently gave advice to the SEO community by publishing a video on this topic.

The video is a part of Google’s Getting Started With Page Experience series on YouTube. The search engine company said there are two categories of page experience ranking factors: Core Web Vitals and everything else. The video focuses more on the latter and teaches online businesses and site owners how to check their websites for HTTPS usage, mobile friendliness, and lack of intrusive interstitials.

Google believes that these three are among the essential factors that can provide users with an optimal experience. Below are the ways to confirm and track a website for each of these factors.

HTTPS

HTTPS is a secure protocol for sending and receiving information on the Internet. A website that uses HTTPS has an additional encryption and authentication layer between a client and the server. Any website that collects sensitive customer data, like personal information and credit card information, should use HTTPS.

Even if the site does not collect such data, using HTTPS can help users by improving overall security and privacy. Since Google’s goal is to have the users’ best interest in mind, they include HTTPS as a positive ranking factor for websites.

If a website does not have a secured authentication or encrypted transfer of data, the site owner must install an SSL certificate for a secure connection over HTTPS protocol.

Checking for HTTPS usage is an easy task; a site either uses HTTPS or not at all. A website that uses HTTPS passes the check. Moreover, the rel=”canonical” must be set to the HTTPS version of the domain. It is also worth noting that all non-HTTPS traffic is redirected to the HTTPS versions of URLs.

Mobile Friendliness

Mobile friendliness is one of the most important factors one should take into consideration because more and more people are using their mobile devices to surf the Internet. Therefore, designing websites to be mobile-friendly ensures that the website performs well on all devices, be it on computers or smartphones.

Mobile friendliness involves a specific list of problems that could create a bad user experience on a mobile device.

A website that has a responsive, modern design would most likely meet all the criteria for mobile friendliness. Google will check if the site’s links are too small to tap or if the text is too small to read. It will also check if all the major elements of a website are optimised for mobile devices.

In the video, Google also shared some tips on making adjustments to ensure that a website is compatible with mobile device users:

• Set a minimum height and width for tappable elements, like buttons, menu dropdowns, etc.
• Ensure the content is scaled to the right size when readers visit the site.

Online businesses and publishers will need the help of professional developers and SEO experts to optimise their websites. Once they have optimised their site, it can create a smoother navigation experience and prevent user frustration.

Aside from the tips Google shared, there are other parts of mobile friendliness that webmasters could work on more, like removing outdated plugins such as Flash. They can also check if URLs meet the criteria with a mobile friendliness checker tool while using Google Search Console to check the entire website.

Mobile friendliness test tools can check how easily a visitor can interact with the page on their mobile devices. Some tools are easy to use; online businesses and publishers only need to enter their page URL to see their page scores.

It is best to use a mobile friendliness test tool alongside Search Console, as the latter notifies site owners about errors, like detection of hacked content. Moreover, these tools can help one manage how their content is displayed on the search results.

Lack Of Intrusive Interstitials

There is no automated tool to check a site’s lack of intrusive interstitials, but one can quickly know if the website passes the check. If a website has automated pop-ups, then it has intrusive interstitials.

Google recommends that site owners avoid covering the whole content with pop-ups or ads that are irrelevant to the page. Moreover, users should not need to dismiss an interstitial before they can interact with the page. The advertisements should also not disrupt the user from interacting with the website.

However, one should note that these requirements do not apply to interstitials used for cookies, user logins, subscription paywalls, and legal reasons like age verification. Google acknowledges using interstitials for these valid scenarios.

Checking AMP Pages

Google also recommends checking the site’s AMP pages with their tool. Many websites are likely passing the experience factors already, but it’s still recommended to use the AMP page experience checker just to be sure.

The AMP page testing tool can provide site owners and developers with information on how their AMP pages perform against the Google Search page experience ranking signal. It also provides actionable feedback on how to improve the pages. Other tools also use APIs available to the public, like Mobile-friendliness Test and PageSpeed Insights.

Work With Position1SEO Today

Here at Position1SEO, we will help your website meet Google’s criteria to improve your search visibility and SEO rankings.

Our quality SEO services do not involve any underhanded tactics or shortcuts. We only use effective white hat tactics and a no-stone-unturned approach to ensure that everything is under control. As we have garnered many years of experience working with a long list of clients from various industries, you can rest assured that your website is in the right hands.

Our work has three simple stages. Firstly, we will provide you with a free in-depth SEO audit and a free phone consultation to discuss your specific requirements. Next, we will send you our stage 1 reports so you can choose the tasks you want us to do for you, creating a unique SEO package for your business. Lastly, we will focus on your ongoing User Engagement and drive your rankings forward.

For more information about our services, contact us via 0141 846 0114 or office@position1seo.co.uk.