The Google Page Experience 2021 update was announced on May 28, 2020 with no definitive date, but will be one of the largest Google updates to date. While no definitive date has been set, 2021 is only two months away at this point. Companies and small businesses should start working on updating their website. 

Google’s latest update is all about the User Experience (UX) behind each and every website. This aggregate page experience update will monitor entire websites and each of its pages, including service pages, blogs and contact us forms. 

This comes as no surprise to those in the SEO industry who have been working to follow Google guidelines and algorithm updates circa Penguin and Hummingbird. However, this upcoming update will hold a lot of weight in reference to the search engine and it could be even bigger than previous large Core Updates and Algorithms such as Penguin and BERT. 

It is important for companies and small businesses to implement the following changes to not lose any website traffic or keywords from the Google page experience 2021 update. 

User experience 

User Experience (UX) is the overall feeling and way a user interacts with a website. If you ask a consumer a yes or no question on a number of different topics, and you want them to answer yes, that is how your website’s design should be. 

A consumer should see the design, its elements and be pleased with the overall functionality and experience of the website down to the content and SEO.

Loading speed 

At one point in time, a website had a short grace period of loading time of three seconds; however, with the latest update a website and individual pages need to load within two seconds or less. While a second might seem like the smallest difference between loading speeds, it does make all the difference. 

Hey developers, Google is looking for code to respond and provide the best experience in less than 100 milliseconds. Loading speeds factors continue to facilitate ranking in Google’s SERP, and that bulky, messy code over time could hurt the overall speed of the website along with its ranking. 

This is when one small change could make the difference between a millisecond and a second! 

Interactivity

How long does it take when a consumer clicks on a box on your website? The longer it takes, the longer the consumer will get annoyed and this affects the overall experience. What about forms that do not function properly? Yup, that will affect the website as well. This isn’t just about loading speeds, but it also analyzes how the elements become ready for a consumer to use. 

Cumulative Layout Shift 

This update measures the total of individual page layout shift scores. What does this mean? This means that elements are coded correctly and load in a reasonable time. It is estimated that it should take less than 0.1 on any element changes. 

If an ad pops up, where are consumers clicking? Are they frantically searching for it to leave? What about not being able to find the close option? This will affect the website. 

Mobile friendliness

52 percent of global internet traffic comes from mobile devices! 52 percent is a large number of search results within Google, and this update is putting even more emphasis on mobile-friendly websites. As a consumer, have you ever had to zoom in and out and struggle to read a website on your smartphone? This is the perfect example of a website that is not mobile-friendly. 

In 2016, Google released their first round of mobile-friendly updates, and while many companies jumped to get their website up-to-date, there are about 30 percent of websites new and old that are still not mobile-friendly. This hurts your brand in so many different ways than SEO such as branding and trust! 

Safe browsing

In an ability to continue to provide a safe browsing experience to its users, Google has put an even bigger emphasis on safe browning and security on websites. This affects the coding behind the website. Safe and clean website code helps to ensure that the website is safe for consumers to browse with no malware detected. 

This means any website that has gotten hacked or are prone to hacks and malware, it is time to get it updated.