Now UX is becoming even more important for SEO
Now a good user experience becomes even more important to rank high on Google. In May, "page experience" will be a new ranking factor to take into account in SEO work. it's not really news that a good user experience is important to fight for the top positions on Google. UX has been important to SEO for quite some time now. What is happening this spring is that there will be a new ranking factor, page experience, which is about how the user experiences the interaction with a page.
Core web vitals
Google came out back in May of last year and told us that this is coming and that because of the pandemic, they want to give website owners time to prepare. The big news they have presented is something called Core web vitals. Briefly, it consists of:
Loading time: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). About how fast the most important elements of the page load. And it should be fast. The recommendation is a maximum of 2.5 seconds.
Interactivity: First Input Delay (FID). About how quickly the user can interact with content on the page. FID should be less than 100 milliseconds.
Visual Stability: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). About visual stability, those things don't move or jump around when content is loaded. For example, so that the user does not accidentally press the wrong button to cause the elements to move.
Read more on Google's SEO blog . In the Google search console also a report for core web vitals.
Page experience consists of these three new search signals plus a number of things that were also important before. For example, the page is mobile-friendly, secure, uses HTTPS and does not contain annoying pop-ups.
UX is important for many reasons
Regardless of what Google thinks, the user experience is something you should prioritize. A good user experience makes your users want to stay and come back, increases conversion and strengthens the brand. Including. We've written quite a bit about the value of investing in UX before, if you want to dig deeper.
Rolled out in June 2021
The change will be rolled out in June 2021 and it remains to be seen how much weight it will have. But regardless of how the page experience affects your Google ranking, it's high time to prioritize working on the user experience and load time, if you're not already doing it. Because why should you spend time and money driving traffic to your site, if you don't give the visitor a reason to stay?
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