Optimizing Landing Pages for Better SEM Performance
In May 2020, Google launched Core Web Vitals (CWV), a set of performance benchmarks designed to enhance online user experience (UX)* and boost site performance.
New standards were recently introduced, with metrics focusing on page load speed, responsiveness to user interactions, and content stability during loading. Meeting these benchmarks can improve UX and potentially elevate your site’s search ranking.
In this blog, we’ll delve into these new standards, examining how they can enhance both user experience and your site’s visibility in search results.
* User experience (UX) is how a person feels when using a website or app. Good UX means it’s easy, fast, and enjoyable to use.
Understanding Core Web Vitals
Let’s dive into what CWV are all about! We’ll break down the key elements like page load speed, interactivity, and visual stability, so you can see how they impact your website’s performance and user experience.
CWVs measure these three elements:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) gauges how long it takes your landing page or website to load. As Google recommends, “To provide a good user experience, strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.”
- Slow-loading pages can cause users to abandon a site before it fully loads, leading to high bounce rates and reduced conversions.
- Faster-loading pages often result in higher quality scores which can improve ad rank and reduce cost-per-click.*
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) measures the time it takes for a landing page or website to respond when a user first interacts with it, like clicking a button or a link.
- A shorter delay means a faster response, making the site feel more responsive and user-friendly.
- improved interactivity can lead to higher engagement rates, encouraging users to complete desired actions such as filling out forms or making purchases.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how visually stable a web page is. Visual stability ensures that elements on a page do not move around unexpectedly, which can be disorienting and frustrating for users.
- Keeping the page layout steady helps keep users’ attention and reduces frustration, making them more likely to take action or make a purchase.
- If content moves unexpectedly during loading, causing misclicks, it results in a poor user experience.
*Cost-per-click (CPC) is an advertising model where advertisers pay each time their ad is clicked. It helps manage budgets by charging only for actual clicks, commonly used in platforms like Google Ads.
Measurement and Analysis
Now that you’re familiar with CWVs, it’s crucial to grasp their impact. By identifying, implementing, and measuring these metrics with analytics, you can optimize the user experience and enhance your site’s performance.
Google reports CWVs metrics through Google Search Console and a report that displays the performance of your pages based on real-world usage data. This report highlights issues with loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. It also offers insights and recommendations to help you improve these metrics and enhance overall user experience.
Understanding the findings in Google Search Console provides insights into how your landing page or website performs from a user’s perspective, leading to better search engine rankings and higher engagement. By acting on this data, you can optimize your landing page for improved performance and overall effectiveness in your marketing efforts.
Tips to Optimize Landing Pages
What does all this mean for your gym and website?
It means that by understanding and optimizing CWVs, you can ensure your gym’s website delivers a fast, responsive, and stable experience for visitors. This not only enhances user satisfaction but also improves your search rankings, making it easier for potential clients to find and engage with your gym online.
Here are some actionable steps to optimize your landing pages and website to improve campaign performance:
Optimize Images and Videos
- Resize Dimensions: Adjust the image dimensions to fit your landing page needs, avoiding unnecessarily large sizes.
- Use Responsive Images that adjust in size and resolution based on the device or screen size of the user viewing it. This ensures that the image looks good and loads quickly on any device, whether it’s a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
Breakdown Long Tasks
A long task on a website is any process that takes a significant amount of time to complete and can slow down the site’s performance. These tasks can make your site feel sluggish. Examples include large file uploads or downloads that require extended time to transfer and complex graphics or animations.
Ensure Visual Stability
- Set Size Attributes: Always define the width and height for images and videos so they don’t unexpectedly resize and shift content around.
- Avoid Dynamic Content Jumps: Ensure that ads, banners, or any dynamically loaded content doesn’t push other elements out of place as they load.
- Use CSS for Layouts: Utilize CSS* to create stable and predictable layouts, ensuring elements stay where they belong on different devices and screen sizes.
*CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, is a language used to style and layout websites. It controls design elements like colors, fonts, and spacing, ensuring your website looks consistent and attractive.
Final Thoughts
Google’s Core Web Vitals update has changed the landscape of search engine marketing (SEM), making user experience a critical factor in search performance. By focusing on key metrics like page speed, interactivity, and visual stability, you can enhance your SEM campaigns, improve user satisfaction, and achieve better ROI.
TAG Digital Marketing (TAG) is here to help you understand and optimize your site’s core web vitals, ensuring it meets Google’s standards and keeps your visitors happy. Let us handle the technical details so that you can focus on growing your business!
Ready to optimize your website for a better user experience and higher search rankings? Contact TAG today.