In today’s time, around 4.6 billion people, which is more than half of the world’s population, have access to the internet. Because so many people are a part of the online world, it’s important to put your website/business online for everyone to see. But this is only the first step. Getting your website to rank for relative keywords is the next battle. While Google and the major search engines closely guard their algorithms, or “secret sauce”, they do provide periodic insights into significant updates or algorithm changes. Recently, Google has launched a new algorithm update called Core Vitals. In this update, your website’s speed has a new impact on your overall online visibility. In order to keep your website at the top of Google Search, it is incredibly important to adapt with whatever is changing around us, including Google’s new algorithm updates.

The Impact

The purpose of the algorithm update is to create an even better web user experience for consumers. We know that websites that are slow and/or lag don’t produce the best experience for consumers, hense website load speed is now a ranking factor for websites. While this change doesn’t completely shift the rankings, by keeping up with what is changing, it increases chances of being one of the top spots on Google. Statistically speaking, website pages that take less than 2.5 seconds to load are the best ranked pages according to Google. The reason that Google values fast working sites is because the take longer to load, the more impatient people become and the more likely they are to click off and look for something else. It also sets the tone to the viewer. If they click on a page that doesn’t load quickly, their first impression might be that the business isn’t as professional as others who take pride in their online presence. Google will also reward businesses who ensure their website is in tip top shape by potentially increasing your keyword position online. There are three main factors, or page experience signals, that Google said will contribute to your search rank, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). To most business owners, this is jargon, but to the Search Engine Optimization and Web Development world, this is important.

Another consideration for improving a consumers online experience is the flow of your website. While pop ups and animations may look great or quickly draw a user’s attention one way or the other, statistically speaking, they can slow down a site and create a bad user experience. Other issues that you may want to avoid is text over graphics and text sliders. While they may be useful in some situations, if text is hard to read or scrolls to fast, believe it or not, Google can see that and your metrics will show negative consumer response. It is important to find a balance between site structure, content, dynamic images, and engagement.

What Should A Small Business Do To Mitigate Any Impacts?

While there are many factors that go into creating a great site like content, overall strategies, dynamic images, and fast speed, it is clear that that Google and the major search engines are taking a bigger interest in the user experience. With the Core Web Vitals update, websites can be negatively impacted by slow server response times and slow loading resources, cookie banners or notices and other factors that impair the user experience.