So by now you’ve probably already heard about Google Page Experience (GPE). If not, GPE is an update to Google’s algorithm that is due to be rolled out this May. In Google’s own words….

“The page experience signal measures aspects of how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page. Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction”.

Is your website ready for the algorithm update in May?

How to Optimise Your Website for Google Page Experience

In essence, Google is trying to say that you can’t just optimise your website for Google, instead you need to put the user first. When you put the user first and provide them with the best experience, the user will be happy and they’ll come back to Google – this is Google’s primary reason for the Page Experience update.

So how do you put the user first…?

Heat Maps

There are several online programs that allow you to track how visitors use your web pages using heat maps. The heat maps highlight the most popular areas of your website pages.

Crazy Egg is one example that allows you too quickly and accurately view your web pages using heat maps. Simply install a javascript snippet on the pages you want to track and allow some time for data to gather.

In simple terms, you want to include your page’s most popular elements as high up the page as possible. For example, most Blogs have a ‘Comments’ section at the bottom of the page. Have you considered adding this towards the top of the page to attract more comments? Alternatively, the featured images within your Blog may not be attracting much attention, how about adding these further down your Blog post?

Core Web Vitals

Google recently introduced Core Web Vitals to its Search Console report which are closely related to the user’s experience.

The current set of Core Vitals covers 3 aspects of the user’s experience –

Loading – The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) should load within 2.5 seconds from when the page starts loading
Interactivity – Pages should have a First Input Delay (FID) of less than 100 milliseconds.
Visual Stability – Pages should maintain a Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) of less than 0.1

Website Load Time / Speed

We all know that the average searcher is becoming increasingly lazy and fickle. If they can’t find what they want quickly and easily, they will back out and potentially visit one of your competitor’s websites.

For this reason, the load time of your website is already a ranking factor with Google, however we expect it to become more important with the roll out in May.

Visit Google’s free Page Insights tool in order to check the current score of your website, on both desktop and mobile devices. Within a few seconds Google will provide you with 2 scores out of 100. Most websites that we review fail this test dismally and it’s rare to see a website score more than 50 on mobile devices.

By engaging an experienced WordPress developer, you can generally increase your page speed score significantly within 4-5 hours. At Adrenaline, we specialise in website speed optimisation and include this within all SEO packages.

Mobile Friendliness

With more than 60% of Google searches within Australia now performed from a mobile device, it’s even more important to make sure your website performs seamlessly on a mobile device.

Within Google’s Search Console, you can select the “Mobile Usability” tab to check if Google has flagged any issues with your mobile website. Some common errors include –

Text too small to read
Clickable elements too close together
Content wider than screen

Most of these errors are relatively easy to fix and it’s worth investing the time to repair them.

SSL Certificate

By now, your website should have an SSL certificate as this has already been a ranking factor for some time. Again, we expect this to become even more important with the new algorithm update.

Learn More

Contact Brad today to schedule an obligation-free discussion to see how we can assist your business with a complete online marketing strategy.

Google Page Experience – Are You Ready?