Is Your Website Ready for Google’s Page Experience Update

That’s right, Google will be releasing a new update May 4, 2021 known as the Google Page Experience update. As the name implies, the updated algorithm focuses on your website users’ experience.  In short, Google evaluates a set of signals from the perspective of the user and what their experience is like interacting with your website.

Google owns the search world, and to reduce cost you should invest carefully. That starts with your website and a marketing strategy that keeps you top of mind with guests and in search results. When done right, your website should be a well-oiled direct-booking-machine.

Before getting started, and to make sure you can apply the information in this blog to your website, plug your website URL into the Google PageSpeed Insights testing tool: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/. As a reminder, Google grades each page individually, so just because your homepage test well doesn’t mean your room overview page does!

What is Google Page Experience?

There are five things included with the Google Page Experience update.

#1 Core Web Vitals

The Core Web Vitals focuses on user experience by measuring three things: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. These vitals apply to every page and you should consider a page optimal when the following metrics meet the recommended 75th percentile.

  • Loading Speed: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the time between the initial page load and when the page’s main content has loaded or is likely visible on the page. To provide your users with a good experience your website should strive for LCP to take place within the first 2.5 seconds.
  • Interactivity: First Input Delay (FID) measures the responsiveness of each webpage from the users first interaction with the page (clicks your “Book Now” button) to the time it takes for the browser to begin the process of facilitating the request (taking them to your booking engine).  To provide a good experience here you should look for a FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
  • Visual Stability: Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how often a user experiences a layout shift. You’ve most likely experienced this before. A webpage “loads” and while you are reading the page shifts. No warning, the text moves, the button you were going to click moves, and just like that you’ve lost your place. For a good user experience your webpages should score less than 0.1.


 

#2 Mobile-friendliness

This simple test determines if your website is optimized for mobile users. The easy way to do this is with a responsive design and through a single URL (exp: www.yourwebsite.com). If your website is developed correctly, any page you run through Google’s Mobile-Friendly Testing tool will come back as;

#3 Safe-browsing

Yes, security is important to Google and the links, videos, or pages you link to or from your website have an impact on the security of your website. Be sure to use trusted sources and check to make sure that they’re working and not causing harm. If you work with a marketing agency, have them run a backlink audit on your website.

#4 HTTPS

Securing your website has been something Google has been pushing for. As early as 2014 they released a blog HTTPS as a ranking signal where they first shared that they we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. However, at the time it had little weight to the overall performance. In 2018 we wrote a post The HTTP to HTTPS Migration to assist webmasters with the transition as Google continued to push its importance.

#5 Intrusive Interstitial guidelines

Also known as pop-ups, intrusive interstitial only become a problem when they are miss-managed on mobile devices. The issue arises when a visitor finds your hotel on a Google mobile search, and when they visit your website, a pop-up is the first thing they get. To minimize the risk, have your pop-up on mobile come up later in your website flow. Or disable them on mobile devices altogether.  Here are some tips to best utilize pop-ups:

  1. Think mobile: Do you have a mobile only popup offer? Should you even have a pop up for mobile? Should the mobile popup message be geared toward my local market?
  2. Display them at the appropriate time: Consider if they are for every visit, for repeat visitors only, for specific pages, and/or for when a visitor tries to leave your website.
  3. Include a distinct Call-to-Action: Examples might include book now, check availability, view offer, use promo code, or download travel guide.
  4. Make them easy to close: Incorporate an “x” in the top right corner or add a second button/link that closes the pop-up. Something like, “No thanks, not now.”
  5. Test: After you’ve set it up, go through the process as if you were a visitor of your website. If you encounter an issue, you better believe it will be an issue for Google.

So, there you have it, Google is pushing the envelope. And while it’s easy to get frustrated with them, remember they are doing what their customers want and are expecting, and you should be doing the same for yours.

rezStream offers effective marketing and website services as part of our Ecosystem that will keep you at the forefront of travel. Request a demo to learn about our website services or download our Definitive Guide to a High Converting Website to learn how we design and develop websites for independent hotels.

Published: March 11, 2021