21st June 2021

What will Google’s latest update mean for your website?

User Photo
James Gardner
Head of SEO
Read time: 5min
Left Angle Mask

You've probably been receiving an increased number of unsolicited emails from SEO agencies reminding you that Google’s Core Web Vitals will become a ranking factor in June 2021 and advising you to take urgent action. You might be asking yourself - Should I be panicking? What are Google asking me to do? Why are they asking me to do this? What should I be doing now to prepare? Don't worry, we have all the answers to these questions below.

Should I panic? 

No, remember that it is one of several hundred different factors that Google uses to rank your site and Google has stated that it will be a minor ranking factor to begin with. It is highly unlikely that it will cause any site to disappear overnight. In fact, you're probably in the same boat as about 96% of the world’s websites that do not meet these new Google criteria today.

Further reassurance comes from Martin Splitt (Developer Advocate, Google). In this video, he explains that site speed might be a differentiator for two sites with equally great content. However all things being equal, it won’t make a site with poor content rank above a site with great content.  

Googles Core Web Vitals

Can I ignore it? 

No, you should absolutely not ingore this! Google has a very good track record of following through and changing the web. In the last few years, it has driven websites to stop using pop up landing pages, to be secure (https) and to work well on mobile devices. It is likely that within the next 6 - 12 months many of your competitors will have improved their websites and the speed of their websites, so it's your task to ensure you keep up with them.   

What is Google’s agenda with Core Web Vitals? 

For many years, Google has advocated creating websites that provide a high-quality user experience. Think of Google as a recommendation service. When someone carries out a search on Google, Google does not want to recommend a site that is: 

  • Off-topic 

  • Made up of badly written or with content copied from another website 

  • Difficult to use 

  • Insecure 

  • Leaves a user staring at a blank page before anything happens 

  • Full of so many images and videos that it takes forever to finish loading 

  • Jiggles and jerks as it loads 

Core Web Vitals is a set of objective standards that covers the last three points. The challenge is that many of the causes of slow page loads are because of the website technology (e.g. WordPress, Joomla, Drupal) and website hosting. It will take a while for these website technologies to develop to meet Google’s standards.  

So, it’s really about pleasing Google? 

No, it is about pleasing your customers and potential customers by providing them with an online experience that they have come to expect in 2021 and which showcases your brand, values and products.  

If your website is doing this well, you will probably be meeting many of the criteria that Google is driving. 

What should I be doing now? 

  1. Think like one of your website visitors, whether they are an existing customer or a prospective customer, and ask yourself: 

    1. Will these visitors find my website easy and enjoyable to use?   

    2. Can they find the information that they need quickly and intuitively?   

    3. Is it equally usable on a mobile phone or a laptop?   

    4. Does it demonstrate and display all the qualities that my brand represents? 

  2. Now visit your competitors’ websites and observe what they do well and what they do poorly. 

  3. Ask a good SEO agency to review your website and give you an objective and data-led review of these same questions. They will help you set the priorities that will make the most difference to your visitors and to Google.  

Action plans

Short term 

Create a list of items that can be improved in the short term. Almost certainly this will involve: 

  • Updating and improving the written content. 

  • Sourcing better photos and editing them to the correct size so they don’t slow your site down. 

  • Fixing anything that is broken.  

  • Asking your web developer to fine tune your page templates to minimise any ‘jiggling and jerking’ as pages load.

Often, we find that businesses have written regular blog posts but have neglected to update their main content pages about their business and products, so be sure to do so.

Medium term 

  • Speak to your web developer and ask them to review your web hosting.  For a relatively small extra cost each month, you might be able to run your website on a faster server and/or use a caching service like Cloudflare. 

  • Whether you run an ecommerce or lead generation site, improving your conversion rate can be the single most productive thing that you can do. By definition, this improves the user experience. Specialist conversion rate optimisation (CRO) agencies use sophisticated tools to find and create the optimum solution quickly and very cost effectively.  

Longer term 

If your website is more than a few years old and you have completed all of the above actions, it is likely that you will need to refresh the technology and the ‘look & feel’ with a new website. 

However, do make sure that you use a web developer that understands marketing performance and that they capture all of the optimisations that you learnt from your current website. Naturally, an important specification for this new website is that it consistently passes the requirements of Core Web Vitals.  

Key takeaway 

Core Web Vitals will be a watershed moment that continues the journey to make the web easier to use. So you should aim to always understand what Google is driving and focus on doing the best by your customers and prospective customers. The key is to deliver highly useful content to them quickly.  

If you'd like to find out more about Google's Core Web Vitals and how we can help you prepare for this update then please get in touch!  

 

Get In Touch

Privacy Policy

Privacy & Cookie Policy ...

This site is operated by equimedia Limited, a company incorporated in England (registration number 3892399), the registered office of which is First Floor, Stella Building, Whitehall Way, Windmill Hill Business Park, Swindon, SN5 6NX.

As a valued visitor to our website, we are committed to maintaining your privacy and being clear & transparent on how we use cookies and any personal data you submit to us.

PERSONAL DATA

If you complete a form on this site, you will be asked to provide certain information about yourself (such as your name, address and email address). equimedia respects the privacy concerns of users of this web site and complies with all applicable UK Data Protection legislation currently in force in relation to its treatment of personal information. This privacy statement sets out our policy in relation to how it uses any personal information collected from you through your use of this site.

By disclosing your personal information to equimedia Limited, you consent to the collection, storage and processing of your personal information in the manner set out in this privacy policy.

In the event that you would like to update your details or have any queries regarding this privacy statement please contact equimedia by any method set out at the bottom of this page.

Prior to completing a form on this website you will also be asked to confirm that you have read our terms and conditions. Our terms and conditions explain how we securely store and use your data. They also explain how this website uses cookies (as below).

USE OF COOKIES

equimedia use cookies to recognise website visitors and to store the way visitors use this site. This allows us to analyse website activity, so we can optimise the user experience and make sure we offer the best content for visitors. We use cookies in order to give us information on the number of visitors to different parts of our website and thus to monitor which areas are most useful.

We also occasionally run targeted advertising to generate relevant traffic for this website. In order to target this advertising effectively, we use a cookie to ensure this advertising is targeted and relevant.

The cookies we use do not contain any personally identifiable information.

Read more about how this site uses cookies.

LINKS

This site contains some links to other websites. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of any of these sites.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

The equimedia privacy policy may change at any time, so you may wish to check it each time you visit our website.

CONTACT DETAILS

By Post:

equimedia Limited
Stella Building
Windmill Hill Business Park
Whitehill Way
Swindon
SN5 6NX

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Author James Gardner
Channel SEM