The fluctuating google search rankings are a major worry for most business/website owners who are new to the world of SEO. To ease you up a little bit, let me say it out loud, most of the times
“It’s not you, It’s them”.
Though it might sound like some cheesy line from an old romantic flick, it’s still valid in this scenario. There are certain conditions for those fluctuations of your search engine ranking which is completely unrelated to your efforts, but mostly beyond your control, due to maybe Google’s ever-changing algorithm and process updates or maybe some new SEO focused strategies/campaigns by your competitors or new websites coming into the picture.
So, you might ask, shouldn’t you be least concerned about them, since you can’t control them? You definitely should not.
As though they might not be directly linked to you, it is something you can still recover from with some strategic initiatives on your part. Especially if your web traffic sees a certain significant drop like below, on a specific day:
Google has a big role to play in the world that we live in today and as the saying goes “with great power, comes great responsibilities”. So, Google has to play the role of a responsible moderator of the internet and provide its users with the best possible experience in terms of data search.
So, they are always improving their algorithm to ensure the best possible results and relevancy in outputs. In 2014 itself they had done almost 500+ updates to their algorithm in a single year and over the years they have not increased but done quite a substantial number of updates, both big and small ones. There are about 200 factors involved in the search results ranking and frequent updates affecting those factors cause quite a bit of search ranking fluctuations after each algorithm change, some affecting more than others.
I personally like that tracks the major Google algorithm update and provides a helpful gist on what it is all about once it’s out. Tracking the updates, helps you somewhat decipher the search ranking fluctuations.
But why are we talking about it now? Because something quite significant is coming your way this May 2021.
Google algorithm update May 2021:
A major update to the Google Search ranking algorithm will soon be implemented, which can overhaul the way Google factors in “Page Experience” elements into search rankings. This includes current Google search signals like mobile-friendliness, secure surfing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitial guidelines. But that’s not it, metrics in Google’s Web Vitals get included in the major affecting parameters list too like – the site’s loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. For site owners understanding these signals and making the required changes should be a priority right now as there is still time.
The major update Google page experience:
Page Experience = Core Web Vitals + Existing Metrics
As the world’s largest and most used search platform, Google wants to provide its users with the foremost quality in providing the most relevant data and now pair it with a high customer experience of well-optimized websites. As it increases the interactivity of the user with the websites. Consequently, Google plans on rewarding the user-friendly and engaging websites by improving their search visibility and penalizing the poorly functioning websites by degrading their search rankings multi-fold.
Part 1: Core Web Vitals
First task: Access the web vitals for your website. You can locate this data through the “enhancements” segment of your Google Search Console account on the left facet of the page. Click thereon and you’ll access the desktop and mobile reports from PageSpeed insights.
The mobile and desktop PageSpeed insights give you an overall snapshot of your page experience score for the users across the mobile and desktop interfaces. A lot of factors are involved in coming out with the score let’s have look at the major Web Vitals measures:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Measures the loading time of the most important content on a page. A fast LCP which should be around 2.5 seconds or below proves to the users that the page has relevancy and it is useful and healthy.
- First Input Delay (FID) – measures the time from a consumer’s first interaction with a web page (clicking a link, tapping a button, and so on.) to whilst the browser methods and response to the interaction. A well-designed page should have an FID of but 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – A layout shift happens while a visual element adjusts its role on the web page and “shifts” up or down without user interaction. The CLS metric measures the entire number of unexpected layout shifts that occur on a page, in short, it is the visual stability metric for the webpage and plays an important role in the website experience. A good CLS score generally ranges close to 0.1.
LCP, FID, and CLS are what we’d call “behind the scenes” metrics, but they play a huge role in determining the worth and health of individual pages and websites alike. Core Web Vitals impact will be essential in rolling out of the Page Experience update in May.
Part 2: Existing Metrics
Factors that will affect the search engine rankings:
Google’s algorithm update for May 2021 functions-in several present metrics for identifying exceptional pages and user experience:
- Mobile-friendliness – Google introduced its mobile-friendly update in April 2015. Many search engine optimization experts have been nervous about this change, dubbing it the “Mobilegeddon” and were soon greeted with annoying search rating degradations. Pages that were quick to load and straightforward to read, experienced higher rankings while their lagging, clustered counterparts sank lower and lower in results. But to this day, mobile-friendliness always plays an important part in your website’s user experience. For example, you don’t want a user to face an issue with a not so visible button on your mobile site which they can’t reach or click. So, make sure to check for any errors on your Google Search Console related to mobile friendliness and try to rectify them as soon as possible. Also, ensure a good round of mobile browser testing for your website too.
- Browsing safety – Google’s secure browsing software allows developers to restore internet site protection issues and protects users’ non-public data from malware and different malicious online threats. Browsing safety and HTTPS security measures have revolutionized the way users interact with the web.
- HTTPS security – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an online communication protocol that protects user data. All forms of data that are sent via HTTPS are authentic, encrypted, and safe from modification. In 2018, Google began penalizing sites with unencrypted connections, labeling them “not secure” within the URL bar. Generally, users are more likely to trust and interact with HTTPS sites, so you want to adopt this encryption for your website.
- Intrusive interstitial compliance – An “intrusive interstitial” is basically kind of a popup ad. It’s something that comes between the user and the page they clicked on, which can be annoying on phones where there just isn’t as much space for ads as on computers. Mostly Penalized interstitials are inclusive of regular popup ads, full-screen interstitials that sit above a website’s header, and full-screen modal windows that block the content on a page. Those four factors – mobile-friendliness, browsing protection, HTTPS protection, and intrusive interstitial compliance – will nevertheless have an effect on website scores along with the most up-to-date Google set of rules.
Why You Should Care About Page Experience
• Web page experience factor after the May 2021 update will be helping in deciding ranking elements between comparable pages.
• Pages that fall behind or fail to conform with these metrics will drop in scores and thereby in search rankings.
• This Google algorithm update for SEO will be helping in riding the wave of user-focused SEO, which will be the way forward for Google’s future updates.
Page Experience Preparation: How to Get Ready for the Google Algorithm Update
You should never underestimate the power of Google updates. But there is no need to be afraid or paranoid as well. Here are three simple tips you’ll need to follow to ensure your site is on the proper track:
1. Perform a site-wide audit to know exactly where you can improve. Have a look at your page speeds, HTTPS safety, and core vital metrics, a few of which Google explains in the PageSpeed insights reports.
2. Fix any issues with existing metrics. If your website isn’t mobile-friendly, confirm it’s before May 2021. If you would like to explore an HTTPS certificate, roll in the hay sooner rather than later.
3. Start planning fixes for ranking factors that will come out in the Page Experience update. These planning include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). If your site has issues with any of these, you’ll be suffering from the update. Plan to fix those as soon as possible with the help of your website development team or SEO agencies skilled in the technical side of the SEO or if you are a development expert then you can perform them yourself, as well.
Conclusion:
User experience has seen tremendous growth over time in terms of importance in a lot of fields. If you have a popular site (with good traffic), and if your SEO is in good shape then Google will eventually want to make sure that your website ranks high in the search results. On the flip side, if people start feeling your website has a terrible user experience, then Google won’t rank that website as high as expected at the end of the day. Just like any algorithm update Google does, expect to ascertain multiple revisions over time. As they learn, they adapt to form their algorithms simpler over time. However, what’s specific about this update is you have advanced notice, long ahead. So, take the possibility and fix any usability problems you can have and hope for the best.
If you want to get your website audited by our experts and help you in making it all set for the May update. Schedule a call with us today.
