1) UX and page experience as a bigger ranking factor
Last August, Google rolled out its Page Experience Algorithm. The update will affect several factors in the user experience, notably its Core Web Vitals, which together form the overall assessment of the user experience on a website.
The update was initially applied to mobile versions of websites and is expected to be applied to desktop searches at the end of March this year, when Google rolls out the final part of the update.
With that said, we can conclude that user experience is becoming a central ranking factor.
User experience isn't just mobile-friendliness and responsiveness. It also covers page speed, interactivity, visual stability and HTTPS, all of which are important parts of the Page Experience Algorithm.
But what can you do to improve your website?
- Analyse and review your current design using Google Search Console, Pagespeed Insights and Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX).
- Focus on user-friendliness and usability if you're redesigning your website.
- Make sure your website is secured with HTTPS.
2) Focus on mobile UX
It's said that by 2025, up to 72% of all internet users will use only their mobile to access the internet. That's why it's more important than ever to strengthen the mobile version of your website.
In March 2021, Google's long-awaited Mobile-First Indexing (MFI) update arrived. In short, it means that Google now prioritises indexing and ranking websites that are mobile-friendly.
If we combine this update with its Page Experience Algorithm, we can predict that websites that aren't mobile-friendly and deliver a poor UX will suffer big losses in their rankings.
How do you prepare your website for the update?
- Implement a responsive design
- Improve page speed on mobile, and enable caching and cookies
3) The machine is getting smarter: better answers to complex questions
Last May, Google released its Multitask Unified Model (MUM), a language-learning algorithm that, according to Google itself, is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT (its previous language algorithm).
MUM helps Google pick up information on websites that can give more comprehensive answers to complex questions. It's a big upgrade on its Passage Ranking Update, released in 2020, because MUM is multimodal, meaning it can simultaneously understand information from different sources (images, landing pages, videos) and thereby give a more complete answer. It also aims to overcome language barriers.
Here is an example Google gave of MUM:
What can you do to prepare for the MUM update?
- Write high-quality copy that contains long-tail keywords and is combined with optimised images and videos
- Add structured data to help Google understand the page
4) Featured snippets get an upgrade
Besides the major updates Google has implemented over the past year, there have also been some smaller improvements to its algorithms, for example the Passage Ranking Update.
With the Passage Ranking Update, Google indexes not only whole landing pages but also smaller passages from the page, also known as featured snippets.
This is particularly useful for very specific searches and voice search, as it becomes easier for users to find exactly what they're looking for. Searches are becoming more intentional over time, and featured snippets will take up more and more space in search results in the coming years.
What can you do to improve your featured snippets?
- Focus on strengthening your long-tail keywords. Research your audience to find out which information is important and what your target group searches for to find that information.
- Create high-quality content. Always think about your audience and your users, not Googlebot.
5) Voice search
Thanks to innovations such as SIRI, Alexa and Google Assistant, voice search technology is developing rapidly and has become much more popular in recent years.
Households in Europe have started to discover smart speakers, and the number of smart speakers in households rises dramatically every year.
To optimise for voice search, focus on long-tail keywords, as voice searches tend to be longer keyword combinations and sentences. When users type into Google rather than using voice search, they tend to shorten the question.
