How Can You Prepare Your Website For The Google 2021 Update?

Google is going to update its algorithm in 2021, forcing SEO marketing agencies to improve and adapt their strategies. The new update is going to include page experience as one of the primary ranking signals, so providers of SEO digital marketing services should start focusing more on designing quality UX for websites.

The goal of the new update is to rank websites that provide excellent user experience in the search engine results pages (SERPs) instead of the more objective signals like on-page targeting and PageRank.

Google announced various factors that determine a webpage’s overall user experience. These are:

Mobile-friendliness: Determines whether if a website is easy to use on mobile devices. This also includes the content’s readability and if the links, as well as other on-page elements, are accessible and clickable.

HTTPS: This focuses on the security of a website’s connection and if it is being served over HTTPS or not.

Core web vitals: This includes three key performance metrics – which are Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint. These three measure the webpage’s interactivity, visual loading, and visual stability while it loads for the users.

Safe browsing: This determines if the website is safe for users to access or if it has malware or hacked content.

Non-Intrusive Interstitials: These ensure that the on-page content does not interrupt the user as they browse.

There are different strategies that SEO marketing agencies can implement to boost the user experience of their websites. This means enhanced mobile usability, better website security, and faster visual and webpage loading.

For instance, they can preload the key resources to make the visual load faster. When a user accesses a webpage, they will first see the above-the-fold content. This will be measured by the Core Web Vitals to determine if the content loads fast. SEOs can inspect their webpage in Chrome DevTools to identify its LCP element and analyse it to know how quickly their content loads.

Another vital thing that SEOs can do is to optimise main thread activity because users sometimes have to wait for the browser to respond, which can be very frustrating. This can be measured by one of the Core Web Vitals, the First Input Delay (FID). Usually, long tasks cause this problem; for this reason, it is better for SEOs to minimise long tasks.

SEOs must also consider the space for the images and embedded resources to load into. Sometimes, a user clicks a particular link, but the webpage suddenly moves around. Because of this, the user ends up accidentally clicking a different area of the webpage.

This problem happens because a website has poor UX and does not reserve spaces for images and embedded resources to load into. Because of this, the Core Web Vitals metric measures the amount of visual layout that moves around as the webpage loads.

There are many other improvements that providers of SEO digital marketing services can do to improve their website’s performance for the sake of their users. They can make mobile-friendly key page templates, audit their websites for security issues, and more.

Website owners and businesses should always improve SEO strategies to comply with Google’s latest algorithms. Not only will this attract more site traffic but will also avoid penalties from Google. Such tactics will only bring good results for their business in both the short-term and long-term.

If you choose to hire Position1SEO, we can help you enhance your website’s user experience and help you achieve the best rankings possible. Take the opportunity to prepare your website for the upcoming algorithm update, and you can expect to get a position on the first page of Google.

Work with us today! You can give us a ring via 0141 846 0114 or send us a message at office@position1seo.co.uk.