Leave it to Google to keep the SEO crowd alert. The world’s largest search engine is known for releasing updates ranging from minor tweaks that go under the radar to major changes that shake up rankings. In the summer of 2021, the update is a core update and its main features include adding Important Web Data to the official list of ranking factors.
What does this mean for WordPress website owners? Most importantly, it means there are several new metrics for search engine optimization that should be front and center. In this article, we will crack this Important Web Data and give you a few tips on how to optimize your website to get them right.
You will learn:
Key Web Data is a group of metrics that Google specifically considers as an indicator of the quality of user experience. There are three, and each is used to measure specific areas of website performance that make the most sense in terms of user experience.
Basic Web Data are:
Simple enough, right? Some of these metrics have been around for several years. Others are fairly new and still in development based on user feedback. Still, whether you’ve heard of them or just met them, you should take note because they will become much more important.
The metrics that Google uses to determine a page’s ranking have always been the subject of much discussion in the search engine optimization community. Google has good reason to keep their cards close to their chest – people are always trying to play with the system. We’ve seen this before with apps like keyword stuffing – people will try to take advantage as much as they can.
Still, it makes perfect sense for Google to give some hints on what to target in terms of website performance. It is useful for both Google and webmasters as they both make use of websites that provide a good user experience. We know that search ranking signals for the page experience include mobile compatibility, HTTPS, meeting safe browsing guidelines, and no intrusive interstitials.
Towards the end of 2020, Google announced that it will add Important Web Data to its page experience signals. It was supposed to happen in the spring of 2021, but the update has been delayed to become available in the summer of 2021. Therefore, websites that want to optimize for Google search results from August or September 2021 would do well to pay attention to LCP, FID and CLS.
It is also important to note a few things about this Important Web Data. You will be able to see your website’s performance on Key Web Data in a report compiled using domain data. If there is not enough field data – for example, if there are no elements that visitors need to interact with, which might occur in the FID – these metrics will be omitted from the report. Finally, you should not forget that. these metrics are improving – CLS has already changed to take into account that some pages need to stay open longer.
LCP isn’t the only metric used to measure the loading speed of page elements. First Contentful Paint, or FCP, measures how fast a page loads any contents. However, this result may not be useful for determining user experience, as the initial content loaded is not necessarily indicative of the usefulness of the page. Content has to be the main piece – an image, a video, or a large piece of text – so we focus on LCP and getting it below that threshold.
If you want to improve the Greatest Content Paint of your pages, you can try:
This is not a complete list, but it should point you in the right direction. In general, you should do what you normally do to increase page load speed. The only difference is that you use the LCP to measure your success.
When you create a website and optimize it to run as fast and efficiently as possible, you will need to do little more than ensure that assets are delivered quickly. If your website has buttons, links, or JavaScript-powered controls that a user can interact with, you want those interactions to be as seamless as possible. It wouldn’t be bad if they were fast though.
With FID, you measure how quickly (by processing event handlers) a visitor’s browser begins to respond to their first interaction with your page. The usual culprit for the slow progress of this section is code – especially JavaScript. To get this out of the way, you can try:
If you are not sure how to perform these optimization steps, you may need the help of a skilled computer programmer. Still, if there are call-to-action buttons you want to see printed, it may be best to get them to start doing what they need to do as quickly as possible.
No one wants to see a website with content floating around as different items move in and out of their virtual existence. This can cause people to miss important buttons like “add to cart” or “sign up for our newsletter” and you don’t want that. Also, you probably don’t want to make it harder for visitors to read your content, which is what layout switching will do.
There are several reasons why layout changes happen. Many of them are also fairly easy to fix. For example, you can try:
You can also try other things. For example, you can also prevent flashing of invisible or unstyled text when loading web fonts.
Let’s wrap it up!
When it comes to optimizing your website for the best possible user experience, relying on metrics like Key Web Data is a great choice for two reasons. First, these metrics are included because they describe certain features that greatly impact user experience.
The second reason you should note Important Web Data is because they are a verified Google search ranking signal. So while you can’t mess with them for no reason, any dip into the “needs improvement” value range should warrant some research and possibly some website optimization.
