If you work in the field of SEO or you’re at least familiar with the topic, you’re likely aware of the update coming in June. This update, called the Page Experience Update from Google, is the latest attempt to make pages that rank in the search engine results as fast as possible. Google wants to deliver an exceptional experience for its users, so it’s ranking sites that are fast much higher in the results.
This update has been looming for a while and is the result of Google introducing tools like Lighthouse, Pagespeed Insights and 3rd party tools like GTMetrix. Each of these tools grade a website for its performance on desktop and mobile, showing website owners where they need to improve. Now, with the new update, website owners who choose not to improve their sites will lose rankings in organic search.
Page Speed – Why Is It Important?
How quickly a website loads on a desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone is critical to the user’s experience. Knowing this, Google wants to reward websites with great page speed. Just put yourself in a potential customer’s shoes – if you were waiting for a site to load and it took more than 10 seconds, how long would you wait until you left the site? Now, we know websites can’t all be lightning fast, but Google wants to see improvements. Unless your website loads large images or video content, there’s no reason it shouldn’t load in just a few seconds.
Where To Start with the Page Experience Update
If you haven’t already received a grade for your website, you’ll want to start at GTMetrix – www.gtmetrix.com. This tool will show you the exact resources that are taking up too much time and bandwidth to load on a site. In most cases you’ll notice that your images are too large, which is causing a delay in loading. If this is the case, simply use smaller images or compress the images you do have.
Other Factors to Consider
Page enhancements can mean a lot more than making images smaller. You’ll also need to consider minifying HTML/Javascript/CSS, defer where certain lines of code load on the page, ensure the site is mobile-friendly in every aspect and fix any broken code. Just think – if you want to show Google that your website has the best experience in your industry, you’ll want every aspect covered.
Keep a Focus On Content
While making technical SEO updates to your website, you can’t forego any content efforts going on. Continue to publish great content on your website and stay the path with your overall content strategy. Larger technical changes will impact the entire site, including pages that are filled with content. And if you’re using WordPress as your content management system – great! WordPress is one of the preferred content management systems and will allow you to remain organized while making page experience updates.
When Is the Page Experience Update Happening?
Finally, the most requested question as of late is…
When is the page experience update actually happening?
Google has been transparent about saying it is in June. However, the company has not disclosed exact dates or times. We do know there is another algorithm update happening right now, but it isn’t related to the page experience update.
In the meantime, be sure to optimize your site as much as possible and be prepared for the update.
