The May 2021 Google update is just around the corner*. It will place a significant weight on user experience for websites in the search algorithm. Hence, SEO will significantly involve giving users a more pleasant aesthetic experience as well as providing relevant content.
This is called the Google Page Experience Update. Small businesses with an online presence, which is just about every small business today, need to prepare for this update. Here’s how they can do that.
What Will the May 2021 Google Update Do?
The Google Update will include page experience as a definable metric. It will measure how mobile-friendly and safe a web page is. It will also measure how many ‘intrusive interstitials’ a page has which affect the page experience negatively.
Other metrics include how quickly a page loads, which can be viewed by the user, how quickly it becomes responsive, etc. Hence, small businesses need to invest in better design for their websites, among other things. Here is how you can start to adapt to the May 2021 Google Update.
How Can Small Businesses Prepare for the Google Update?
Write More Catchy Titles for Google
The titles on your home page, service pages, etc. should all be very catchy. This will ensure that your page will be picked up by Google immediately when it shows up in response to queries.
For example, if your home page is named “Home-Company Name”, it’ll be a very generic name. Instead, it should be named something like “Best Content Marketing Tool for Your Business”. This improves the metadata that Google looks through.
If the metadata aligns more with a query, you will generate more leads.
Look At Your Competitors
You should know what your rivals are doing online. If their website’s functionality, appearance, responsiveness, etc. are better than yours, then you need to adapt. They will otherwise be ranked higher than you after the update, if they aren’t already.
Give Your Website a Facelift
The best thing to do to prepare for the Google update is to audit your website. Make sure to cover whatever is on your home page, services page, blogs, etc. They should be long enough (800 words at least), and they should satisfy Google’s quality standards. Content updates should also be frequent and recent.
If your website doesn’t satisfy these criteria, you should invest in more content creation. Other than that, you should invest in better website creation tools or a website aesthetic facelift. This is important since your website’s graphical appearance will have a direct effect on its rankings after the update.
The May 2021 Google Update is an incredibly important milestone. If small businesses don’t adapt to it, they will be left to wait in the purgatory of page 2.
Giving your website a much needed overhaul is the only way to both survive and thrive during this update.
*=The May 2021 Google Update has now been postponed till mid-June 2021. It will continue to roll out until completion in August 2021.
