The content you’re competing against, the AMP option, your organization’s resources and business requirements are all part of the decision.

As we already know, Google had launched the Page Experience Update last May and with it was the announcement for a new set of metrics called the Core Web Vitals. It also laid out a plan to remove the AMP restrictions on the Top Stories carousel. The update will go live in May 2021.

Here’s how you can prepare your website for the Page Experience Update:

It’s a known fact that many of the page experience criteria, such as mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, the presence of intrusive interstitials, page speed and browsing safety are already Google search ranking factors, are already Google search ranking factors and websites should already be optimizing with those aspects in mind. So, this update is not a very major change, but that does not mean you ignore it either. The Core Web Vitals include the performance metrics LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay) and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) that Google is incorporating as a ranking signal in the Page Experience update.

In addition to its potential impact on search results, the Page Experience Update may also affect the way SEO is approached on a day to day basis by providing them with a set of qualitative metrics to strive for.

SEOs need to start planning and evaluating the trade-offs now:

Some of the factors that are included in the page experience update such as page speed are already core tenets of SEO and should always be considered for SEO. Site latency is not only bad for SEO, but also bad for user experience – and now both. SEOs will need to start planning and preparing for user experience – before it starts affecting their SEO efforts.

User Experience and Core Web Vitals are meant to exist as a parallel alternative to AMP and not act as a replacement. Google has also said that there will be live indicators to distinguish search results that have met all of the page experience criteria. It’s in Google’s best interests to deliver search results that match user’s expectations – the user experience update will definitely make an impact on search results.