By Joseph Dyson
Do you believe your website’s content is up to the mark, but you’re still not getting enough traffic? An important reason why some websites aren’t ranked higher on Google and other search engines is that, despite offering high-quality content, they offer poor website performance and user experience.
If your website takes longer than the standard load time (i.e. 1-2 seconds) to show up on the users’ screen, they will promptly leave your website and switch to a faster one. Because of this reason alone, your website won’t rank high.
Ranking on top is getting more competitive day by day. Research shows that over 25% of the users click on the first link on Google’s search results page. Today, no one has the time to surf through all the websites and links on Google and then decide which website to open. To acquire an edge over websites, you need to prioritize the user experience. Google has recently updated its ranking algorithm and now, the page experience plays a primary role In your website’s visibility.
Let’s take an in-depth look at how Core Web Vitals affect SEO.
How Do Core Web Vitals Help You Rank Better?
Core Web Vitals are a set of factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience. The three important elements of Core Web Vitals include the loading speed of webpages, their visual stability, and how interactive they are.
In addition to these factors, they also determine whether the content available on a website is appropriate and relevant or not.
Let’s take a deeper look at what we mean by the terms we’ve used above:
Loading Speed
The amount of time taken by a website to show up on a screen is called the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). A loading speed of 2.5 seconds or less is considered good. However, if it takes a user four seconds or more to have to wait for your webpage to load, chances are they’ll eventually go back and open another website. This will severely affect your rankings!
How to Increase the Loading Speed
A web page’s load time depends on several factors such as the hosting server, the distance between your server and the end-user, and image size.
If you don’t have a technical background, dealing with these issues can be a bit overwhelming. However, you can always seek link-building services from a reputable SEO expert to improve your website’s loading time.
Visual Stability
The visual stability of a website is typically measured via CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). CLS is a user-centric metric that determines how easy it is for the user to navigate through your website.
Have you ever opened up a website and closed it immediately because of ad pop-ups or because of moving objects on the webpage while it’s still loading? If your user sees unexpected shifting of webpage elements when they open your website, they’ll move to another website. You can resolve this problem by improving your website’s visibility.
A majority of websites and mobile apps use dark mode to improve the user experience. The dark mode is preferable to use if your webpage only has pictures and minimum reading content. However, if it has articles and blogs, dark mode makes it difficult for users to read the information.
Consider using flashy visuals to catch the users’ attention at first. Images are a very good replacement to having to type out your feelings. Just create your website graphics using fresh and vibrant colors to grab your audience’s attention immediately. Once you truly understand the concept of visual stability, the world is your oyster.
Research shows, a website with good graphic content is more likely to get on Google’s first page than any other website.
How Can I Ensure Users Have a Great Experience on My Website?
To improve the user experience, use high-quality images with defined sizes and limit the spaces for ads so that it’s easier for the viewer to scroll through the website. But please note that images are only used to grab users’ attention. If your website only shows advertisements and images, it’ll make it more difficult for the user to stay on the website for a longer time.
Ask your SEO service to add graphics and images according to your needs.
Interactivity
The website’s user interactivity can be measured by using the FID (First Input Delay) metric. Let’s put it this way, the FID is the amount of time it takes a viewer to finally be able to open a tab or enter their details into the form after they click a link or tap on a button after opening your website. We all know the rule; the first impression is the last. On the web, this first impression can only be created if the website looks good, is authentic, and,most importantly, quick.
FID is all about the speed with which a website can fill a user’s screen with pixels. If the programmer you’ve hired writes arduous code to create a website, it won’t open quickly and its interactivity will be seriously compromised.
All of us must have faced this issue countless times. We’re in a frustrating situation where the internet connection is fine and every app is running great except for that one website.
Why does that happen? Well, the search engine is trying to comprehend your search by the information on the website. This condition is called input latency. The main reason for input latency is your browser trying to open a very large JavaScript file.
How Can I Make My Website More Interactive?
To make sure that your users have a good time going through the website, hire SEO services to provide more accessible options to users. They can help you optimize your FID score by breaking up long tasks into smaller ones, limiting the content quantity, and working on some other technical features.
The competition is high and so are the standards of a good website. However, more than 350ms FID indicates that you need to ask for link building services to resolve the issue.
Authenticity
Everything described above is going to work if and only if your website has the correct information. If your website is about digital marketing, it must be all about digital marketing.
A majority of websites take the user’s personal information and use it against them. A good website, however, never distracts the user and takes their suggestions for improving the website’s overall user experience.
How is it Important for SEO Rankings
Here’s why user experience matters.
Better User Experience Means High Rankings
If users have a high-quality experience on your webpage, it will eventually improve your rankings in the search engine. It indicates how accessible your website is to users and how easily they navigate through it. By accessibility, we mean using good graphics, images, an attractive interface, and shorter loading times. You can hire SEO service experts for the best results.
Keep this rule in mind: the first impression is the last. If one user finds your website unattractive, they won’t visit the website again and will also spread the word against you, digitally or physically.
Let’s Take a Look at Some Facts
- Since most of the search traffic originates from mobile devices, Google has switched to mobile-first indexing. Therefore, you need to develop mobile-friendly websites to rank higher.
- Intrusive interstitials are pop-up advertisements that may block a major part of your website’s mobile landing page. Google considers them a hindrance to a seamless user experience.
- Google only notices real user data for the evaluation of Core Web Vitals.
Conclusion
You need to hire programmers to create a good website. However, to ensure it runs smoothly, you need SEO services and link-building services. You have to be creative in revamping your website for better positioning in the search engine.
Reach out to the best SEO services and link-building services to have your back if you want to run a successful website. Together as a team, you have to put in some creativity and effort to boost website rankings.
Joseph Dyson is an SEO expert who has been associated with Search Berg since 2012. He advises various businesses across the country regarding SEO and digital marketing strategies.
