Search engine optimization such as SEO is the process of optimizing your website to rank high in organic search engine results.

What is “rank high” in organic search engine results?

For example, there are 37,900,000 results when I search my blog name on google. My blog URL appears in “2nd place” among 37,900,000 search results. This “2nd place” is SEO rank.

Search your business name or your selling product. Where you can find your website?

Your potential customers can reach and/or find your business easily if your SEO rank is high. (like appear on the first page of google search)

OK, so how to improve your website SEO?

Google Search and Ads teams announce that site speed is now used as a ranking factor. (1)

Starting from May 2021, Google will add new considerations for the SEO approach. The new SEO approach is called Core Web Vitals such as:

• Loading – how long your website takes to display all of the contents?
• Interactivity – how long your website takes to submit a form, click a link, or tap on a button?
• Visual stability – how long your website takes to display all of the fonts or images?

Existing SEO approaches include mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines that are still applied.

In order to maximize your search rankings and keep your page in the top results, you need to consider these Core Web Vitals to your site.

By adding these Core Web Vitals, your SEO ranking may improve! If you are working on building a site, now is a good time to evaluate your site performance.

Google also states that: (2) “Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centered metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!)”

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How to evaluate your site performance?

You can hire an SEO expert on the internet, but with a little time and strategy, you can improve your position on the search engine results without spending a lot of money.

For instance, build a mobile-friendly website. More and more people are using their smartphones to search for businesses/products. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly!

And also check your site speed to improve Core Web Vitals. As I mentioned earlier, you will have little chance of a high search position if your site is slow.

Not only does Google want fast loading website, but also users like it.

Viki Green, a user experience researcher analyzed the impact of slow page load time on website performance. (3)

Here is a real voice from the internet users:

• 47% of users expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less
• 40% of users will abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 seconds to load
• 52% of online shoppers state that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty
• 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with website performance are less likely to buy from the same site again

A fast loading page is a very important factor in user experience. Do you know your site speed? Have you ever checked it before?

If you have a WordPress site, Monsterinsights is a great plugin to check your site speed as well as improve loading speed.

MonsterInsights is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily add, customize, and manage Google Analytics on your WordPress dashboard. I really like easy to understand overview report of Google Analytics that MonsterInsights provide, but my favorite part is the headline analyzer and word balance score! It really helps me to create SEO-friendly headlines.

And also, they launched a new feature called Site Speed Report last year.

Using this Site Speed Report, you can easily find out the overall score for your site speed on both mobile and desktop.

The overall score is calculated by:

• Server response time
• Fonts and images loading time
• Time to interact like filling out a form
• Total blocking time

From this score, you can find out which part is slow and take the next action to improve the overall speed. MonsterInsights will also set a goal for you and provide recommendations to improve your site loading speed! (explaining the issue too) I really like this educational part.

Wrapping Up

Check your site loading speed and improve it before May! There are so many great tools to help you, like MonsterInsights.

Resources:

1. Speed is now a landing page factor for Google Search and Ads | Web. (2019, September 23). Google Developers. https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads-speed#:%7E:text=The%20Search%20team%20announced%20speed,performance%20using%20our%20speed%20tools.
2. Evaluation of page experience for a more comfortable web. (2020, May 28). Google Search Central. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/05/evaluating-page-experience
3. Green, V. (2018, May 21). Impact of slow page load time on website performance. Medium. https://medium.com/@vikigreen/impact-of-slow-page-load-time-on-website-performance-40d5c9ce568a