 Today on The Journey, we're talking about how Google's new algorithm changes can and will affect your page rankings, as well as give you some steps you can take to stay on top. Google announced that it postponed the rollout of the page experience update, specifically the ranking change to be a gradual rollout that won't start until mid-June 2021. It won't be fully rolled out until the end of August. But if you're trying to stay ahead of the algorithm, sounds confusing and maybe a bit overwhelming, don't worry. We're here to help just share and run through the latest SEO techniques that will keep your sites visible. Alright, so let's talk about the update. What's going on? Well, basically, Google plans to update its search algorithm to include a factor called page experience. The page experience includes all aspects of how users interact with a webpage and how easy or painful it is for them. But what does this have to do with your SEO? Well, SEO is a crucial element in your online presence. Whether you believe it or not, your website will not succeed if you don't optimize their SEO strategy. And here's why. 75% of internet users don't go beyond the first page of Google and over 81% of consumers search for a product or service online before making a purchase. And now with those statistics in mind, we've got some ways to keep on top of these changing trends and updates. Starting with first become a user experience expert. Google uses metrics called Core Web Vitals and they're user centered metrics that put more emphasis on user experience. And it's broken down into three measurements, first input delay, FID for short, two cumulative layout shift, CLS, and three largest content full paint, LCP. These things will measure how fast the page loads, how soon it gets interactive and its stability while loading. And we recommend testing these features on your website to really see how they work. And an excellent way to get Core Web Vitals report is just to use the free tool page speed insights. And to no surprise, mobile friendliness is key. In fact, 75% of internet users will access the internet solely through mobile devices by 2025. You guys, that's not too far away. And according to the update, Google will now be crawling the mobile version of a website first before the desktop version. So make sure that all the content on a site, including images and videos are optimized for mobile to avoid being penalized by Google and then lose rankings. Then do your keyword research. The user keywords and SEO ranking, it's not a new thing. But unlike in the past, keyword density no longer factors into SEO. And keyword density is just stuffing your page as much as possible with your chosen keywords. But you have to invest in keyword research to really ensure that you use keywords that can drive traffic and boost sales for your business. A couple of tips on using keywords, definitely want to use long tail and target keywords that match your business. Google search console can definitely help with this. And then consider the intent, besides using SEO tools to find the right keywords to use, you must understand the intent of your users with the right intent. Even a low volume keyword can give excellent results. And website security is a must. You've heard us talk about this on the journey. So Google is increasing its value of website security when determining a ranking. As a website owner, what you need to do, you need to add specialized features that are specifically security features, including plugins and SSL certificates. And that will help to make sure that your SEO strategy is successful. And more than ever, more than ever, people need to feel safe on a website. Otherwise, they will leave the site for another, which will of course drop the ranking on the search engine results page for you. Let's talk about search intent. Arguably, Google's main purpose is to provide content based on the user's intentions. If I want to search cool things to do in my area, I'm going to search that I hope to find cool things to do in my area. And to help with this, Google uses bidirectional encoder representations from Transformers algorithm. That is a mouthful, but we'll just call it BERT to promote user focused optimization. So if content is not BERT friendly, it's not going to rank or maintain its rankings to optimize your content for Google's BERT. Perform a Google search for the keyword you want to rank before creating the content, just to ensure that it matches the searcher's intent. And be sure to include my favorite video content. So with over one billion users globally, YouTube makes an excellent marketing platform. Hey, we're here right now. And if you haven't started to use videos in marketing, you guys are majorly missing out. The first thing you need to think about when optimizing video content is the video channel name and description. Of course, you shouldn't overload your video description with keywords, but include an excellent description of what the video channel is all about. Help you target the right audience, help you get found. And as for your videos, the best way to optimize YouTube SEO is just make a list of topics that you want to discuss and then do your keyword research. Yeah, I mean, that's what we do here on the journey. Next tip we have for you is to optimize for voice search. And according to Google, Google knows all right, about 27% of internet users are using voice search on mobile. And since most are likely to use voice search when asking a question, it'll be best to optimize some of your content with questions like when, what, and how. It's important to note that when a user makes a query using voice search, they'll be giving a single answer and not a list. In most cases, the answer will come from a snippet and in other cases from webpage. This is super important. I came to the realization that voice search was incredibly important as I'm watching my daughter grow up and how acclimated she is to the phone. She's learning how to type and text and all that good stuff. But she's using voice for almost everything. And as generations grow up with the technology we have, that's going to be the go to if I'm just going to search and talk something. So making sure this is part of your strategy now will definitely set you up for success in the long run. And if there's one SEO trend that will never change, it's the need to produce relevant and original content, also valuable content for your audience. There's no shortcut here, but it's so important because if users don't find your content valuable, they will leave your page. They'll find another option besides an increase in bounce rate will hurt your digital authority. So your ranking and the best approach toward this is to develop a content strategy with your target audience needs in mind and your content should be interactive and touch on their needs. And although content length is not a ranking factor, long form content has been found to earn more links and shares, which is a ranking factor. In fact, Neil Patel like stresses long form content over almost anything. And one study found that long form content and that's really anything over 7,000 words can drive four times more traffic than short read. So anything between like 900 to 1200 words plus long form content allows you to gain expertise, authority and trust, all of which are crucial in content marketing. After all, only people with authority and credibility can create long form original content on a given topic and add all tags actually just stress this in a webinar recently today alternative tags form a crucial part of any excellent SEO and alt text refers to image descriptions that Google crawlers use to scan through the images to determine whether they match your content or not besides Google, alt text are crucial for virtually impaired visitors who use screen readers to interpret a web page's visual content. And don't forget about Emma's favorite focusing on local SEO. As the name suggests, local SEO is designed to direct visibility for websites in a specific geographical locations. The good news is many people are searching for local information on Google. The first step towards local SEO is to sign up for Google my business and include your current address contact information and operating hours. Long tail keywords are exceptionally important for SEO. So you should really optimize the site with keywords to boost your chances of ranking locally. So a couple examples here for you would be like best hotels in Phoenix, Arizona, best San Diego luxury hotels, best five star hotels in Seattle. You can tell I'm about to go on a trip because I'm looking for hotels. But those are some of the examples that came top of mind. So the key to improving and maintaining your ranking after the page experience update is ultimately the same as it was before create the best possible content and optimize your page to provide a good user experience. You may have time before the update, I hope you do. But look, don't wait to optimize your pages. Follow these tips to improve user experience, which will help you now. And after the update takes full effect. But wait, your journey is not over. We have over 200 episodes for you to watch and continue on and learn and grow with your business. Make sure to like, comment and subscribe. This is The Journey. We'll see you in the next video.