What is Page Experience?
Google says “page experience is a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value”. Page experience includes the existing search signals of: mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitials. Page experience also includes newer signals called core web vitals which I cover in this article here. Both these articles provide you with an understanding on the basics for how to optimise your website for page experience.
Understanding the Existing Page Experience Signals
Just last September Google switched to mobile-first indexing. This means that Google is now crawling websites using its Mobile Super-Agent –basically that’s its mobile bot and takes priority over the desktop bot version. This is important to you because it means that Google is placing more emphasis on your website as seen through a mobile viewport. And as such the search rankings of your website is influenced by the mobile friendliness of your webpages.
1. Mobile Friendliness
Your webpages are either mobile friendly or they are not. There is no in-between. It’s pretty rare these days to get any new websites that are not made responsively. That means the website adjusts to the viewport you’re using and renders itself most appropriately for that size. Typically, there are three viewports to consider 1) mobile 2) tablet and 3) desktop. There are or course mobiles that are almost as big as a tablet so it’s gets a little more nuanced than this. But I digress.
So how do you tell if your webpages are mobile friendly?
The easiest way is to simply look at your web pages on your mobile device. Look at more complex pages such as those with functionality and perhaps video content. Is the overall user experience as good as it should be? You may or may not be surprised at how many sites are still not optimised for mobile and their search rankings will be suffering. This could result in significant business loss. For example, if I was looking for holiday cottages and I can’t browse, interact, and read the content properly then Google is going to penalise that website and business.
Another way, and a much quicker way, is to review your mobile report on Google Search Console. This will quickly tell you if your pages are friendly or not and where the issues are. After that, it’s over to your developer or agency to resolve the issue.
mobile friendliness in page experience
2. Safe browsing
You can use Google Search Console again and open the security issues report. Google is looking at sites that are not safe for consumption. For example, they may have unwanted malware. We’ve all been done this unwanted trick before when trying to download some free sottware we hoped would be useful. There are other sites specifically set up for fraudulent activity such as phishing. No doubt your website is not intended for anything like this but the security issues report will let you know if there’s something you ought to get fixed immediately.
3. HTTPS
Your site needs to be secure – this is not just for e-commerce businesses. It’s easy to check – is there is padlock beside the URL when you look at it the page in the browser? For small businesses and start-ups, companies perhaps with just a few people, having a secure site is something that can be forgotten about. Afterall, it just might not seem that important to you if your site is informational only. However, if it’s not secure, users will see not-secure label and the credibility of your business can suffer from poor perception. It’s back to that user experience – but don’t forget it’s impacting your search rankings and being found by customers.
4. Intrusive interstitials
Everyone hates interstitials. Many websites are now so interstitial heavy it’s almost impossible to read the content. You can often click on them by accident and end up navigating away or launching new unintended content. Every website requires a cookie notice so this is not deemed as intrusive even if you find it annoying. There are other page features which also provide pop-intended pop-ups as part of the build of the site – again, these are not intrusive. Mostly, if you’re a small business it’s unlikely you’ve got this problem.
If you’re a small business you’ll need to to optimise your site for page experience search signals. It matters a lot in terms of how you rank in search results. It’s important to start with the key fundamentals and make sure your website page experience is finely tuned. If you’ve got it wrong it can severely impact your bottom line. Luckily there are people who can take care of this for you – The Craft Works included.
