Strategies to Prepare Your Website for Google’s March 2024 Update
As a business owner, you know just how important Google rankings are to the success of your business. So, when there are changes to Google’s algorithm, it’s understandable to feel uneasy. What’s going to happen to my website? Will it continue to grow? Am I prepared for what’s coming?
Google’s next core update is coming in March 2024, and with it comes a change to their Core Web Vitals metric. Let’s take a closer look at the upcoming change and what it means for your website moving forward.
A Brief Word on Core Web Vitals
First, it’s helpful to understand what exactly Core Web Vitals are – as the name suggests, this is a critical part of what makes a website good in Google’s eyes. Core Web Vitals takes three parts of the user experience of your website and computes how user-friendly your website is. The three parts are:
– Load Speed – the time it takes for the largest element of a page to load, measured as Largest Contentful Paint (or LCP).
– Interactivity – the delay between a user click on a website and that site actually responding to the click, measured as First Input Delay (or FID).
– Visual Stability – how much the content shifts during loading, measured as Cumulative Layout Shift (or CLS).
Having a great score within these Core Web Vitals not only makes your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), but it also improves the user experience on your site.
What’s Changing?
In March 2024, Google will be making an update that changes the Interactivity metric from First Input Delay to “Interaction to Next Paint” (INP).
Instead of measuring the delay between one click and response on the website, Google will be measuring all interactions possible on the site and measuring only the one that takes the longest.
And Google isn’t messing around when it comes to the user experience – it will only rate a site green for this metric if the measurement is under 200 milliseconds. Any site with an INP value higher than 500 milliseconds will rate as “poor”.
How to Prepare
Understanding the change is only half the battle. Before Google starts to roll out the new algorithm, it’s critical for your team to have a game plan for your website. The overall goal: ensure that your entire website is responsive and snappy. Some of the strategies developers such as those at Pink Dog Digital use to achieve this goal include:
– Compressing and optimizing images
– Caching webpages
– Using asynchronous and defer loading for CSS and Javascript files
– Reducing redirects
– Optimizing code
– Eliminating unnecessary plugins from the backend
Google will continue to roll out changes to their algorithms and Core Web Vitals to encourage companies to build websites designed with their users in mind. With an experienced partner like Pink Dog Digital, your organization will be ready for the March 2024 update and all future updates.
Learn More About Effective Web Design and Programming at Pink Dog Digital
At Pink Dog Digital, we understand the finer details of UX and UI, and how they make a website successful. We can provide effective strategies and tactics to fully optimize your website for the Google March 2024 update, ensuring it continues to be seen by your target audience.
Contact us at 410-696-3305 or fill out our online Contact Us form to learn more about our services or to request a quote. You can also send us an email at pinkdogdigital@gmail.com.