It’s no lie to say that websites are constantly having to adapt to the SEO changes search engines, such as Google, make to further improve the user experiences online. However, ultimately, the core SEO has, pretty much, stayed the same: provide high quality and unique content that web users will find useful and enjoy reading. The SEO I am talking about is the ‘little’ things around the side that can help boost the high-quality content SEO.
These areas will not make or break the SEO of an article but are a catalyst for improving or declining the SEO. This means, if you have great content, it will still rank very high for certain keyword search phrases. However, if you want to get to the top spot instead of second, making sure to address the below SEO elements will really help towards the end of 2020.
Core Web Vitals
Core web vitals are a fairly new addition by Google to address concerns regarding page speed and user experience. They fall under three elements:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – this measures loading performance: how long does it take for the largest contentful paint to be loaded. Google states under 2.5 seconds are good, whilst 4+ seconds as poor.
- First Input Delay (FID) – this measures interactivity: how quickly is the web page able to become interact upon being requested to load. Under 100 milliseconds is deemed good, whilst over 300 milliseconds is poor.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – this measures the web page stability: how the content moves with different parts of loading, or how responsive and stable the site is. If it is under 100 milliseconds, this is good, whilst over 250 milliseconds is poor.
Google has stated that core web vitals will influence the SEO of a website/article, but not by early 2021. For this reason, there is still plenty of time for website owners to address any concerns that your website might have with core web vitals.
How much of an impact poor core web vitals will have on a website is still yet to be seen. The general consensus of the community is that it will help an article, but it won’t ‘make or break’ an article – content will always be king for that.
Page speed
Related very much to core web vitals, the speed of a website has a direct impact to the SEO of it. If there are two websites with similar content, you can bet the website with a quicker page speed will rank higher.
Page speed’s SEO weighting has increased, almost in correlation with Google moving towards mobile indexing. Therefore, it is vitally important to make sure the mobile version of your website is as quick as it can be, both for SEO reasons and user experience. – Read more
