“Website without visitors is like a ship lost on the horizon.”
― Dr. Christopher Dayagdag
There were times whence webmasters and content writers focused on just one aspect. That one aspect was word count. In the past high word count was imperative. Writers added a lot of fluff to reach a specific count that was a minimum of 800 to 2000. This they thought was enough for ranking. But sometime back Google’s Danny Sullivan PSA announced that word count for SEO is not a thing anymore. This was sort of an update that shocked the SEOs all over the world. What the PSA meant was that the word count has no meaning.
Any good and helpful content will make its mark. This simply means that top results in the SERPs are not there because they have the most word count. Google of late is giving tremendous weightage on page experience which includes helpful content.
Good Page Experience
A good page experience is a construct that includes everything that makes a visitor stay on the page and explore. This means no bounce rate. If the page is lacking proper content and is slow to download it will discourage visitors and the page will experience a high bounce rate. A webpage does not only relate to a good design and content there are more on-page elements like proper internal links, a good link architecture, and relevant images with alt text. The webpage should be mobile-friendly since more than 55% of search is made on mobiles. But of late web core vitals have also come into the picture.
Web Core Vitals
Another set of metrics that Google announced recently was the Web Core Vitals. These metrics relate to LCP, TTFB, FCP, CLS, and overall page load time.
LCP stands for Large Content Paintful which relates to large blocks of text or images. The page images should not hinder download hence they should be compressed but retain high resolution. LCP should be under 2 seconds.
TTFB stands for Time to First Bite. That relates to how quickly the server responds to a query. This relates to the responsiveness of the server. The ideal TTFB should be 200 milliseconds. The static content should load at 100 milliseconds while in the case of dynamic content, it should not be more than 200 milliseconds.
FCP stands for First Content Paintful and it relates to the time when the browser renders the first piece of element from the DOM. This is when something appears first and the visitor comes to know that some activity is taking place and he stays put. The ideal FCP should be 1.8 seconds or less.
CLS stands for the cumulative shift. The measure indicates that elements do not slip off when the visitor tries to place a cursor on it. Ideal CLS is .01
Page Experience Conclusion
A good page experience is dependent upon all elements that make the page download faster. It should comprise well-crafted on-page elements like titles and meta descriptions. The write-up on the page matters a lot it should be meaningful and up to the mark. There should be no fluff in the write-up and it should contain semantics and should be saturated with keywords. They should be well-crafted and formatted. Besides, graphics, images, and videos should add to the experience. Page experience matters a lot and the page should deliver.