SEO Ranking Poised To Change With Google’s New Page Experience

Keeping your website high in the search engine rankings is a crucial component of online marketing. It can take significant time and commitment given that Google algorithms analyze an estimated 200-plus factors to generate its constant rankings. Naturally, few online marketing specialists can devote resources to perfectly tweak their websites to account for all of those factors. But most make sure to account for the primary search engine optimization (SEO) factors believed to carry the most weight in the rankings. This would include:

• Quality content
• Keywords
• Meta Descriptions
• Title and H tags
• Fresh content
• Internal links
• Outbound links
• Backlinks
• Mobile-friendliness

You are paying attention to these primary SEO factors, right? 

If not, then you’ve already got some serious catching up to do to ensure that your website won’t get totally buried by Google search rankings. If you do focus on these factors as part of your SEO, then it’s time for you to prepare for some changes because Google is upping the SEO game.

Prepare for Google’s New “Page Experience”

Google is expected to launch an update to its SEO algorithms in May, which will include new ranking factors collectively called the “Page Experience.” In short, Google is going to lend more SEO weight to users’ experiences with interacting with a web page. This might sound somewhat subjective, but there are distinctive website interactions that can be considered good or bad no matter who the user.

Load speed being a perfect case in point. In fact, more emphasis on load speed is expected to be one of the major ranking factor changes included with the Page Experience. If any of your web pages are slow to load, we suggest that you get working on a fix before the updated algorithm starts lowering your rankings because of it.

An inability to navigate through a website due to structural and/or design flaws is another interaction that most everyone would agree is bad. Thus, Page Experience is expected to penalize sites with obvious bad structure and design. The design elements of your website may indeed be subjective, but they will only impact rankings if they cause confusion or otherwise impede a smooth website experience.

Page Experience Puts More Emphasis on Mobile

In announcing the planned updating to their algorithm last summer, Google said that part of the goal behind the initiative was to make “the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces.” In other words, Google is putting more emphasis on ranking the mobile-friendliness of websites.

This likely means that companies can no longer afford to ignore mobile-friendliness in their SEO efforts. Some tips for optimizing mobile-friendliness include simpler webpage design and ensuring that the site structure is optimized for mobile usage and response.

Other Ranking Factor Changes with Page Experience 

Google’s Page Experience ranking factors are expected to evolve over time as the platform fine-tunes the changes or otherwise adds to them. Other Page Experience SEO factors that are expected to be included with the initial launch include:

• Safe browsing—pages will be penalized for having malware or other malicious content.
• HTTPS—websites being served over a secure HTTPS connection will rank higher than those on HTTP.
• Visual Stability—Your rankings will be negatively affected by unexpected movement of page content.
• Intrusive interstitials—If elements of a web page, like say a pop-up or graphic, obscure other elements of the page, you can expect a hit in rankings.

Moxxi Marketing Can Help You Optimize for Page Experience

You’ve got several months to prepare for the SEO ranking changes expected with Page Experience, so there’s no need to panic. Also, we believe the primary ranking factors will continue to carry the most weight in SEO. In fact, Google itself made a point of stating “Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content” in announcing Page Experience. Thus, make sure your website has great content and adopts other primary ranking practices. 

If you would like help preparing your website for Google’s Page Experience, or otherwise want to enhance your site’s SEO, Moxxi Marketing can help. Whatever your online marketing needs consult with Moxxi Marketing by contacting us today at 239.330.6236.