SEO is currently facing a major revolution with the introduction of Google’s page experience update. Put simply, Google is promising to rank pages not only by the quality and relevance of their content but also by the quality of their user experience. While this sounds like a huge challenge to businesses and SEO specialists, luckily, there are already excellenttools that allow for greater control over one’s SERP rankings and page experience metrics. This article focuses not only on the page experience update but also on schema, a mark-up language enabling SEO experts to easily control information displayed in Google’s web snippets.
More Emphasis on Image and Video Optimisation
Among the metrics introduced by the page experience update are the ‘largest contentful paint’ (LCP) and the ‘first input delay’ (FID). LCP measures the time that is required for a website to load its largest element (these are frequently videos or interactive contents). FID focuses on the time spent between the user clicking on a website and actually being able to interact with its content. The above means that websites who aim to increase their SERP rankings would need to drastically reduce the size of any large content elements, including high-quality photos and videos.
Fortunately, schema mark-up is a great way to address this issue. Schema allows SEO professionals to easily highlight what information is displayed on Google’s web page snippets. This means that your customers can receive accurate information about your products without visiting your web page. Schema, therefore, can be a great way to avoid lowering your SERP rankings if you are yet to meet Google’s page experience guidelines.
Eliminating Intrusive Web Page Content
The page experience update is also promising to drastically lower the SERP rankings of web pages with intrusive content. This includes, but is not limited to, auto-play audio and video, pop-up ads, and unauthorised notifications. If you are relying on any of these methods to communicate your marketing information, you might want to change the layout and design of your website. This also means that any of your competitors who use the above techniques may lose organic search traffic unless they adapt to the new requirements. While the page experience update might necessitate you to invest in SEO by hiring digital agencies or freelance SEO experts, your efforts are likely to be rewarded.
Prioritising Mobile-Friendly Web Pages
Mobile-friendliness has been a staple of good SEO for years. The page experience update adds to this by introducing the cumulative layout shift (CLS) metric. This indicator assesses the degree to which a website can suddenly change how its design and UI are displayed on different devices. Because of this, the page experience update will prioritise web pages with minimalistic and responsive designs. This is bad news if you have been relying on interactive digital marketing content that is difficult to adapt to smartphones, tablets and other smaller gadgets.
While schema cannot be used to make a website more mobile-friendly, this mark-up is great for quickly highlighting the best features of your products (e.g., positive customers’ reviews) right in the search results page. This means that mobile users can still receive the marketing information you are trying to communicate even if your website is not yet fully responsive.
Changing How Domain Authority and Page Authority Are Calculated
Domain authority and page authority are one of the most complex indicators of how a website could perform in search results. Put simply, traditionally domain and page authority measured the perceived trust of users toward a specific page, its age, the frequency of links to other high-authority websites, content relevance and the consistency with which your website is updated. However, the page experience update is sure to mix it all up by introducing CLS, FID and LCP in measuring page authority.
In other words, even if you regularly provide valuable content in the form of blog posts or product recommendations, you will struggle to improve your page authority without decreasing your page loading times, reducing the size of your interactive content and simplifying how your website looks on mobile devices. If you have been focusing exclusively on content, it might be time to hire external SEO help to avoid lowering your traffic.
Although the page experience update introduces some significant challenges to SEO, this change is ultimately a great opportunity for businesses to increase their traffic and strongly improve their page authority. We hope that this article clarified what this update promises to do, what metrics are you should focus on as we head towards 2021, and how you can use schema to improve your search engine rankings. Above all, do not be discouraged by the sudden changes promised by Google, and instead, utilise the update to give your site a freshen up, and gain valuable customers through organic searches.
Ellie Richards is an online Marketing Manager for Original PhD, specialising in PhD thesis writing. She is passionate about researching and writing on various topics, including Education, Marketing, and Technology.