Major Google updates are like Marvel movies. They are often announced well in advance. And those announcements immediately spawn thousands of blogs and videos full of theories.
Google’s next big update arrives in May of 2021 (just ahead of summer blockbuster season) and they have given the world’s webmasters and marketers a full year to prepare themselves.
What’s going to happen? At the risk of oversimplifying the process, you can expect 3 things to happen after any major update:
- Some businesses will rise in the rankings
- Some businesses will plummet in the rankings
- Some will remain essentially where they are
Even the most experienced SEO professionals can’t definitively say who will fall into each category. However, the ones that have studied Google’s many updates over the last decade have predicted that we will likely see the following things.
Organic SEO Tactics Will Continue to Provide the Best Results
What are organic SEO tactics? Basically, it’s putting in the hard work to:
- Write quality content that human users find engaging, linkable, and sharable
- Use keywords strategically, without stuffing or spamming
- Earn quality links on respected site
If you have been doing these 3 things for the last few years, you’re probably ranking reasonably well right now, and you will probably continue to do so after the Core Web Vitals Update.
“When you put in the work and follow proven organic SEO tactics, you probably don’t need to be afraid of Google’s updates,” said Paul Teitelman, owner of PaulTeitelman.com.
“But, if you’ve been using shortcuts or out-dated SEO tactics, you should probably be very nervous.”
A New Need for Speed
A fast site has always been a crucial part of your SEO success. But the Core Web Vitals are going to take things to the next level.
Google’s announcement told webmasters to pay close attention to three new metrics:
- How long it takes for a page to completely load (Largest Contentful Paint)
- How long it takes for a page to become interactive (First Input Delay)
- How long it takes for a page’s elements to stop shifting while loading (Cumulative Layout Shift)
Fast performance will be more important than ever, with a more specific definition than ever.
It Will Remain a Mobile-First World
Google’s search algorithm started shifting towards mobile-first indexing a few years ago, meaning they would look at a domain’s mobile site before they looked at the desktop site when crawling.
The Core Web Vitals will use mobile-friendliness as a major ranking signal and continue to reward the sites that provide the best mobile experiences.
Of course, your mobile site needs to be fast, according to all of the metrics we covered in the previous section. But you also need to ensure that your mobile users aren’t running into things like cumbersome interstitial ads that prevent them from being able to use your site.
Is this update a big deal? Yes, and it will likely impact millions of websites. Will it be a big deal for your business? That probably depends on what you’ve been doing for the last few years.
