How to Optimise Your Site for Google’s ‘Experience Signals’
Search engines use ranking signals, which are pieces of information that are used to determine where you appear in search results. There are different groups of ranking signals, from content quality and relevance to user experience.
Page experience signals are ranking factors that determine whether your website visitors have a good experience when they visit your website. If your website doesn't offer the best usability, Google may not rank your content highly, even if it is relevant and high quality.
When it comes to ranking your web pages, Google doesn't offer a complete list of the experience signals it uses, but we do know they use Core Web Vitals, mobile responsiveness, and HTTPS security.
Let's look at each one a little closer:
Core Web Vitals are a group of website performance metrics that are essential to user experience. These focus on the loading speed of your website to how quickly your site responds to user inputs, along with whether your content shifts around after rendering.
Google collects metrics from real users in Chrome, using the information as a ranking signal. We recommend running a speed test to check your website's Core Web Vitals.
With close to half of all Google searches now being carried out using a mobile device, Google prioritises websites that are mobile-friendly. That means ensuring that your website works seamlessly across all devices, providing a great user experience.
Google has been using mobile-friendliness since 2015, and have recently shifted to mobile-first indexing, that means Google uses the mobile version of a website to crawl and index your pages.
HTTPS protocol ensures that your website uses encrypted data when transferring between the website visitor and your server. This ensures third parties are unable to see what page the user is visiting, along with protecting any sensitive data the user may send. Google has been prioritising HTTPS websites since 2014.
At Genie Crawl, we recommend using Google Search Console to identify any experience issues on your website. You can test specific pages using PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse.
Google Search Console can provide reports on overall page experience, any mobility issues, along with Core Web Vitals, while Lighthouse helps you determine the speed of your website.
Testing and monitoring your website for page experience signals is imperative to ensure your content is ranked in search results. Monitoring page speed, mobile-friendliness, while ensuring your site is HTTPS secure, is all essential to your SEO success. Genie Crawl can test your website, along with providing recommendations to improve experience signals. If you need help improving experience signals on your website, get in touch with our expert team now.
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