Where to Focus After Algorithm Updates

As the world keeps spinning and technology keeps changing, SEO becomes more and more advanced. Where it was once a matter of keyword inclusion, it is now a complex web of changing standards. Every time search engines update (we’re looking at you, Google), businesses must modify their websites to keep up and remain relevant.

If you are running a company website, you likely understand this. Updating your SEO is nearly constant, especially if you are trying to grow your online marketing strategies. Fortunately, you can hone in your focus to stay relevant without overhauling your website every few months. No matter how many algorithm changes occur, a few priorities remain the same.

Content Is King

Something that simply isn’t changing in the world of SEO is quality content. No matter what changes, high quality content is central to the algorithm.

This idea is fairly vague. “Quality content” seems rather subjective, and it can be difficult to pinpoint exactly what that means for your website. Essentially, “quality content” implies content that is:

•     Evergreen, meaning that it is relevant regardless of time or place
•     Informative
•     Interesting
•     Sought after
•     Well-written

No matter what happens with search engine algorithms, content that fits the above criteria still generally comes out on top.

Why Is Quality Content Still Relevant? 

With nearly infinite updates and changing standards, it’s normal to wonder why content even matters anymore. With the whole world at your fingertips, most information can be found somewhere online.

However, quality content is still what users are looking for, and ultimately all of the algorithm updates occur in order to better serve users. When your website provides information that is interesting and well-written, users are more likely to linger and enjoy it. This signals to the search engine that a user has found useful information, and it should usher more users to your site.

One of the keys to success is getting users to stay on your site, because that appears as raw data for search engines to work from. The longer people spend on your page, the more the search engine knows you’re legit. The more ‘high quality’ you seem to the search engine, the more effective your SEO is.

User Experience

The broader umbrella that seems to withstand algorithm updates is quality UX measures. The internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Users expect their necessities to work to their advantage. For example, if you buy a car, you expect certain features, such as the Bluetooth stereo, to be in a common sense location so you can use it. While this was considered a feature for a long time, Bluetooth stereo is fairly standard in most cars nowadays.

The same goes for the internet. When users click on any site, they expect it to work for them. The internet is no longer new, so there is no real reason for a user to have to struggle against a website’s design in order to find what they want. This means that UX design is absolutely here to stay, and should be considered a permanent priority among website designers and marketers.

Google’s Core Web Vitals

Google has been teasing its Core Web Vitals for months. Though the process was slower than anticipated because of the pandemic, the updates finally fully rolled out in July of 2021. This update represents a new set of standards facing digital marketers and UX designers. It is also an effort to remove spam links from search engine results. Overall, the rollout is a set of criteria that allows Google (again, a non-interpretive entity) to give an overall score to a website’s behavior. Consider it the Better Business Bureau of the internet.

In order to create a quality score, Google developed three main categories that every website will have to perform well in.

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This encompasses the largest piece of media on your website. This category is assessing how long it takes for the largest part of your website to properly load. This standard is set because the page is considered “loading” until the largest piece of media has properly appeared. Longer loading times mean a diminished user experience.

Anything under 2.5 seconds is considered good LCP. Anything above that will likely hurt your search engine ranking.

2. First Input Delay (FID)

FID tracks the amount of time between when a user tries to use a function of your website and when the website responds. For example, if you have a large button that says, “click here for more information,” FID counts how long it takes from when the click occurs to when the “more information” appears.

Anything less than 100 ms is considered good. Anything more could affect your search engine ranking.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS covers any shifts or adjustments your page has to make before it settles at “fully loaded.” This can occur on either a mobile site version or a desktop version. The goal is to ensure that your page does not shift at all once it has appeared on a screen. It should be sedentary and usable.

A score above zero means that your page has room for improvement.

Long Term Success

The ultimate goal of this information is to help you to achieve long term success with your SEO efforts. Though there will undoubtedly be more algorithm updates in the coming months and years, these standards are unlikely to change too much. Now that we’ve developed and understand the internet, we are refocusing it on the user; its existence is no longer an attraction on its own, we must create websites that users want to visit. Consider it like the Ford Model T. Technically, that design would still get us from point A to point B. However, we’d be rather uncomfortable on the journey, and we have the resources and technology to create a smoother car ride. Google is simply changing standards so that our internet experience is smoother as well.

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