It’s expected that Google’s Core Web Vitals, its website development standards, will be merged with some of its other user-focused signals this May. When completed, Google expects to be able to analyze the website experience of visitors even more deeply and further improve its ranking system.
In anticipation of this, brands might want to visit Google Search Console and its extensions to see how their website currently measures up. It can determine things like spam and indexing problems and troubleshoot problems like mobile useability and advanced market research for both offline and online data. It can also indicate whether Google is reaching the brand’s key pages. If it isn’t, now’s the time to review and adjust the link strategy.
Why? Mobile phone users rely on Google for information and searches and this news comes amidst projections that 3.7 billion people or 72.6% of internet users will be using only their cell phones to access the web by 2025. That forecast was made by the World Advertising Research Center after reviewing data from GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications), a mobile network group of operators.
In advance of Google’s transition, brands would be wise to check their websites to see just how mobile-friendly they presently are. Call up the Google Mobile Friendly Mobile Test. It takes less than a minute and will deliver a screenshot of how the brand looks on Google from a mobile device. It also reports problems a user might encounter, like font sizes too small or the use of Adobe Flash which most mobile devices don’t support.
Run Google’s Mobile-First Indexing to further check on the brand’s current ability to handle queries from cell phones. Ensure that page speeds, images. and loading times are optimized for cell phones. What was important before – keywords in page titles, relevance, headers, and backlinks are still vital for good SEO.
What’s also anticipated is an expansion of Google’s passages feature to help users find that proverbial needle-in-the haystack. High placement of keywords may no longer be as important. CMI expects this to improve search queries by 7%. That and subtopics containing long-tail keyword phases may become more vogue as well.
Begin using long-tail keywords in content and repeat them in headers, titles, etc. A November 2020 study of nearly 2 billion search queries by SEO company Ahrefs revealed that long-tail keyword phases of three or more words raised the likelihood of being found. Also strive to earn featured snippets. Ahrefs’ research also found that more than 12% of searches return SERPS with featured snippets.
Another Google feature, Tag Manager, can help brands understand the frequency of PDF downloads from organic traffic. It can also alert marketers as to how often organic search visitors followed links on the website to info@ and sales@ email addresses.
Seek to optimize where possible. This may mean revising page titles. Tweak them looking at ranking data, search volume, and keyword relevance. Test different variations which might also include small changes like vertical pipes, dashes or no separators, to see what works best.
Finally, keep page content headers current to maximize ranking results. All these efforts will not only help prepare the brand for Google’s anticipated Core Web Vitals in May, but will probably make it easier to transition after the announcement is made.