In the early stages of Google, keywords were the all-important factor in rankings. While they remain important to this day, other variables have been added to the equation to further optimize the algorithm.
Recently, Google announced that user experience (UX) will play a larger factor in the newest iteration of the ranking algorithm. Now, to have a site that ranks highly, you can’t simply draw people to your site with relevant content.
It must provide more—it has to keep them there and offer quantifiable value.
But how is user experience measured? Here’s what you need to know.
The Page Experience
In 2021, Google released a developer document detailing the Page Experience criteria. These signals measure how a user perceives their experience with a site beyond the content. It can be broken down into a few key categories:
Core Web Vitals
These are real-world, user-centric, web design stats that score the various aspects of your page according to how quickly it loads, the interactiveness of pages, and the stability of loading content. Such metrics fall under three categories:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – This quantifies loading performance. A good UX LCP should happen within 2.5 seconds after a page begins to load. If it takes longer than that, users are likely to leave the page.
- First Input Delay (FID) – This measures page interactivity. A good UX should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – This measures a page’s visual stability. A good UX should maintain a CLS of 0.1 or less.
To measure Core Web Vitals, Google provides several developer tools.
Mobile-Friendliness
In 2021, mobile accounted for more than 60% of all organic search engine visits. Now, if your website isn’t mobile responsive, you will automatically create a poor user experience for more than half of your potential visitors. This will also result in poor user engagement metrics.
To measure mobile responsiveness, Google provides a Google Mobile Responsiveness test.
HTTPS
Your page should be served over HTTPS. Doing so helps ensure that the site is secure.
Focus on User Engagement Metrics
How can you tell if users are having a good or bad experience? There are two metrics that serve as strong indicators of where you’re succeeding. They are:
- Dwell time – If users spend a long amount of time on your web page, Google interprets that as though you’re reading everything and deriving value from the information therein. Engaged users have longer dwell times.
- Bounce rate – The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your website after seeing a single page. Ideally, you want users to click through to other pages.
Improving User Experience with Semgeeks
Aside from the UX design factors, there are several actions you can take to further improve the user experience of SEO-friendly pages. This includes:
- Making content digestible and visually appealing
- Leveraging headers and bullets
- Adding images, videos, where applicable
- Providing CTAs
- Including internal and external links
And this is just the beginning. There are dozens of other ways you can improve the user experience for your website.
Do you need help with that?
Semgeeks is a New Jersey SEO company that has the tools, team, and resources to build a digital marketing strategy that fosters an incredible user experience.
Whether it’s SEO, PPC, content, socials, email, or analytics, our solutions and UX design will help you rank above the competition.
Sources
Search Engine Land. The Google Page Experience Update: User experience to become a Google ranking factor. https://searchengineland.com/the-google-page-experience-update-user-experience-to-become-a-google-ranking-factor-335252
Statista. Mobile share of organic search engine visits in the United States from 3rd quarter 2013 to 2nd quarter 2021. https://www.statista.com/statistics/297137/mobile-share-of-us-organic-search-engine-visits/
