User Experience
User experience is an important factor for SEO, ensuring visitors have a positive experience when they view a website creates positive brand awareness, while also helping with a site’s authority in search. Within our Hangout Notes we cover recommendations and insights from Google to ensure your site provides a positive user experience.
Google Doesn’t Use Pogo-Sticking as a Ranking Factor for Specific Pages & Queries
Google analyses user data at scale for millions of queries to determine the success of algorithm changes. This means that rankings for a page at a query level won’t suffer if it experiences users pogo-sticking back to the SERPs.
Page Speed Update Will Use Scale to Assess Speed
The Page Speed update will be on a scale where: the faster pages are, the more Google can take this into account. This approach is opposed to Google’s previous speed update, which only differentiated between very slow pages and all other pages.
Pages With Many Interactive Elements Won’t Appear as Web Light Versions
Dynamic pages with many interactive elements won’t be made available as Web Light versions by Google in search.
Load Scripts After Rendering to Improve Page Speed
Consider embedding scripts so that they load after the page has rendered to improve load time, especially if it is only required for functionality.
Serve the Same Content to Crawlers and Users Including Structured Data
While it isn’t an issue to only serve structured data to crawlers and social media sites, it doesn’t have much impact on page speed and it could provide some value for users. For these reasons, John recommends serving the same content across the board to users because there isn’t much to be gained from omitting things like structured data.
Engagement Metrics Are Used To Evaluate Algorithms
Engagement metrics, like bounce rate, aren’t used as a ranking signal on a page level. However, Google will use engagement metrics to analyse which algorithms are working well and which aren’t across billions of queries.
Google Weblight Improves Browsing Experience Over Slow Connections
Weblight is a Google initiative to improve web browsing for users with a slow internet speed. It rewrites the URL of a site and transcodes the content to make it faster and more easily digestible on mobile devices. Sites can opt out of this service by setting the HTTP header "Cache-Control: no-transform".
Poor UX May Have Negative Indirect Impact on Rankings
Sites with a poor user experience are unlikely to directly impact rankings but may indirectly negatively impact rankings in the long term as visitors are unlikely to link to and share the site.
Google Uses Behavioural Metrics to Evaluate Algorithms Not to Influence SERPs
Google uses user behaviour when evaluating algorithms using millions of URLs and looking at how algorithms are competing with each other and which ones are working best. However, on a small scale Google doesn’t use behavioural metrics like bounce rate or short clicks to influence SERPs.
Fine to Use Different Navigational Elements Dependent on Viewport
From Google’s perspective it is fine to use different navigational elements on a website dependent on the viewport.