NEWSLETTER 13
New on the Blog:
Here’s the latest post on the Freelance Writing Pros Blog:
Website Usability & Google’s 2021 Updates
In this week’s blog post, I shared a handful of common website usability mistakes that might drive clients and prospects from your professional site.
Usability issues like those are going to be a bigger issue than you might realize this year.
Why?
A while back, Google announced a new “page experience” ranking factor that will go into effect in 2021.
What is Page Experience?
Essentially, Google plans to give sites a boost when they offer a better user experience (or UX).
This isn’t entirely new, though it will have more of an impact on rankings down the road. It’s associated with Google’s “core web vitals” which already guide you in improving the user experience on your site.
Things “page experience” would focus on are:
- your site’s loading speed and largest contentful paint;
- layout shifts (making sure page elements don’t bounce around when people view them, scroll, or swipe);
- whether or not your site is mobile-friendly;
- whether or not your site is considered safe (no malware, phishing, etc., which could exist from past hacks if you didn’t clean them up well);
- your HTTPS status (all sites should use SSL by now);
- whether or not your site uses pop-ups or interstitials (bascially, if anything covers the primary content when your page loads).
Page experience hasn’t been implemented as a ranking factor yet (though site speed itself is). So if you have concerns about how your site fares in any of these areas, you might want to schedule in some new year’s maintenance.
Remember, a strong search engine presence is hands-down the best way to attract highly-qualified leads. We’re talking about people who are literally searching for a writer in your specialty area, often ready to hire.
Don’t let your rankings slide when the page experience metric goes live. Give your professional site a look over and see where it could use improvement when it comes to usability and the user experience.
Jenn
