August 4th, 2020

Fuel Hotel Marketing Podcast: Episode 160 – Google’s Latest Ranking Signal Marks A New Age In SEO

by Stuart Butler

Don’t worry, it’s not the death of SEO and it’s not another portmanteau with some random word strung together with ‘geddon’, like mobilegeddon. In fact, hotel SEO is very far from being dead and there’s new information from Google that should have good marketers very excited. Google is preparing to make a major change to its search ranking algorithm by introducing a new ranking factor known as Page Experience. In this episode, we discuss what the new factor is and how you can prepare your hotel website to rank higher and beat your competition.

Click Here For A Crisis Management Resources For Hotels Master List

SHOW NOTES:

What is Page Experience?

It is a combination of page experience factors. Some Old, Some New. Sites that have a combination of high scores for all of these factors will have a much better chance of earning first page rankings in search results.

Old

Mobile Friendliness
- Text Too Small To Read
- Clickable Elements Too Close Together
- Content Wider Than Screen

Site Security
- Do you have an SSL/TLS certificate that allows your site to HTTPS protocol and establish a secure connection to your server?

Intrusive Interstitials
- Anything that makes content less accessible to the user
  - pop-up that covers the main page content when someone visits from search resultsAn interstitial that a user has to dismiss before viewing content

New

Core Web Vitals
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures perceived load speed and marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has likely loaded. To provide a good user experience, LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.
- First Input Delay (FID): measures responsiveness and quantifies the experience users feel when trying to first interact with the page. To provide a good user experience, pages should have a FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures visual stability and quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift of visible page content. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1.

Combining Old & New

This is Page Experience. If you have a great cumulative score across all of these old & new factors your site will be much more likely to outrank your competition.

When Will This Go Into Effect?

Google is giving us all a chance to recover from the effects COVID-19 before they launch Page Experience as a ranking factor
They have said this will go into effect in 2021
Google will provide a 6-month notice before it is officially launched
This will continue to evolve over time

How Will Page Experience Affect My Hotel’s Website?

Great content should still be your main focus
Page Experience will be the tie-breaker to decide which site will rank higher when both sites have great content

What Should I Be Doing Now?

All of these factors that make up Page Experience are already important
If your website is not secure, make it secure
View Search Console or run your website through Google’s mobile-friendliness checker. Fix any errors
If you are using intrusive pop-ups that block the main site content when someone visits from search results. Remove them, or at least move them to a second page visit.
Use Google Pagespeed Insights or Lighthouse to identify issues with LCP, FID, & CLS
- Prioritize these issues based on what is easiest to fix and will have the most impact to what is hardest to fix and have the least impact.
Keep listening to the Fuel Hotel Marketing podcast for updates on Page Experience

========================

In The Newsaroos:

Abysmal April pulls Expedia Group down to record lows in second quarter
https://www.phocuswire.com/expedia-group-q2-2020-financial-report

========================
Submit your questions and topic ideas on Twitter to @_travelboom or info@travelboommarketing.com.
IN ADDITION TO THE PODCAST WE HAVE A BUNCH OF WHITEPAPERS AND STUDIES YOU CAN DOWNLOAD HERE