The UX and content signals that Google actually values

People-first content

“People-first content” is content that aligns with your audience’s wants and needs, providing in-depth resources that address their issues and add value to the existing scope of content on the topic. 

This has always been a key principle of Google’s algorithm, but has been especially influential since 2022’s Google Helpful Content update.

Aside from building content with tangible value for your audience, it’s also crucial to ensure that the content provides your audience with a natural and satisfying reading experience, rather than being built exclusively to game search engine algorithms.

Prioritising people-first content has become even more important in recent years as AI tools leave a bigger imprint on digital marketing. When discussing people-first content, Maxine Bremner from leading link building agency Hive19 states that, “While Google doesn’t actively penalise AI-generated content, it could harm your ranking as it doesn’t create Helpful Content with unique insights. It also won’t provide more value than other content, making it less useful to your audience.”

Creating truly audience-driven content that adds more value to the current searcher experience is always more demanding on time and resources compared to going through the motions of a standard content pipeline. However, the return on this kind of content will promise significantly more long-term value for your SEO ranking signals and user engagement.
 

Trust signals

With the massive proliferation of digital content, it’s more important than ever to give your audience (and Google!) reasons to trust your content.

For some time now, Google’s algorithms have been fine-tuned to detect and rank content that demonstrates its credibility, accuracy, and transparency. 

With concerns about fake news and increasingly convincing AI-generated media, trust signals are not only a benefit to your website but fundamental to your website’s long-term organic visibility.

Some effective ways to boost the trust in your content include:

• Citing original sources with outbound links to trusted, primary sources as much as possible.
• Displaying “last updated” timestamps.
• Including author bios or bylines that showcase your writers’ credentials, professional background, etc.
• Including disclaimers for YMYL topics (e.g, law, health, and financial advice) that clarify the purpose of your content, e.g, “for educational purposes only”.
• Using schema markup structured data, for example Author, DatePublished, DateModified, Citations, helps Google understand this information and better organise it in Gemini AI summaries.

Many variables that affect trust in your website and content can be hard to control yourself, for example backlinks from high-authority websites using their own citations. However, by doing what you can for every new piece of content, you’ll be able to gradually build trust signals that will have a long-lasting positive impact on your organic rankings.

Core Web Vitals

Though Google is famously reticent about the details of how its algorithm analyses and ranks web pages, one area where it’s been much clearer is UX signals as part of its Core Web Vitals.

These are basically a set of technical variables that Google will check to gauge the user experience you’re providing on your website, judge the quality of it, and rank your content accordingly.

The names of Google’s Core Web Vitals can feel a little intimidating if you’re not an experienced web developer. However, they’re all fairly simple concepts that you can work on using a standard CMS and common web design tools.

Here’s a closer look at each of these Core Web Vitals, and what they mean from a web design standpoint:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is how long it takes for the main content element on your webpage (for example, a headline or a large image) to appear on the user’s screen. 

Google recommends that you ensure your main content appears within 2.5 seconds, which you can achieve by keeping your most memory-intensive content elements compressed and high up in the page structure.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

INP is the response time of your website when a visitor clicks on a button, text hyperlink, or another interactable element. Slow responses can feel glitchy and frustrating, which is why Google recommends keeping response time to under 200 milliseconds.

To achieve a low Interaction to Next Paint, it’s important to be wary of overloading your web pages with too many animations or scripts, as this often leads to a delayed response when visitors try to interact with your site.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS looks at whether elements of your site move around unexpectedly while the page is still loading up (for example, text changing font or buttons jumping from one place to another).

Though this happens with many sites to some degree, if it’s coupled with slow-loading pages, it can cause visitors to click on non-interactable elements and have a poor-quality experience.

To avoid these kinds of issues with your page, try to reserve space for dynamic content like videos, images and ads, as this will keep your content in specific areas and prevent elements from displacing the other content on your page.
 

Responsive design

Google has been public and vocal about its preference for sites’ mobile versions for some time. Despite this, some webmasters are still falling behind on creating a mobile-friendly experience through responsive web design.

According to Search Engine Land, “Mobile-first indexing means Google uses the mobile version of your website as the primary basis for indexing and ranking rather than the desktop version,” and has been an official recommendation by Google since 2023.

Aside from being a clear influence on sites’ organic rankings, responsive design also has a positive impact on the user’s experience, helping you improve conversion and maximise the chances of users returning to your site.

Though the majority of modern CMSs provide responsive design by default, you and your developers may need to work on extra, smaller jobs to implement a positive mobile experience for all devices, including:

• Using a single responsive codebase, with no separate versions for separate devices.
• Employing fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries.
• Making your navigation touch-friendly, with ample spacing, readable fonts, and no horizontal scrolling necessary.
• Preventing content, metadata, and structured data from being hidden from the mobile version of your site.

As mobile web traffic continues to surpass desktop, and Google’s preference for mobile increases, having these best practices in place will only become even more fundamental to making your site visible online.
 

Optimising UX and Content, the Right Way

Knowing what really counts with Google can be challenging, especially in the wake of sweeping or unexpected algorithm updates. However, by sticking to the principles of adding value with content and making your site experience as smooth as possible, you can give your site a strong foundation and a better fighting chance in the evolving digital marketing landscape.

For more support with getting your site as Google-friendly as possible, be sure to check out our other blog posts, or find out how our bespoke web design services can help your organic reach.

Article by David Reeder. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-e-reeder/