Category: Digital Marketing

Improve Your Tech Website’s Ranking with Google Core Web Vitals

Actionable Insights for Your Website's Performance

Estimated Read Time: 4 minutes

Intended Audience: B2B Business Owners, Microsoft Partners, SaaS-Based Organizations

Google is on a quest to improve the user experience of surfing the internet by optimizing search engine results. Now, optimization is no longer focusing only on creating quality, informative and reliable content; it’s also about delivering a great user experience. To clearly define what a great user experience refers to, Google announced Core Web Vitals that help measure the performance of your website.

 

Google first announced these performance measures in June 2021. By adding these quantifiable measures, Google is trying to help businesses or website owners know where they stand regarding website ranking.

 

If you own a B2B tech website, then this new update is extremely useful for you as it will help fine-tune your current SEO strategy and take necessary actions to improve overall website performance and organic search results, leading to higher clicks and engagement.

What are Google Core Web Vitals?

Under the user experience umbrella, Google has set the following metrics for measuring Core Web Vitals. Read ahead to learn if your website’s core web vital scores are in the green:

Google core web vitals largest contentful paint
Measure the Loading Performance with Largest Contentful Paint

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

Isn’t it annoying to wait for a webpage to load? The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measure is set to capture and evaluate your webpage’s load speed. According to Google, if your web page takes more than 4.0 seconds to load, your website’s performance is poor and will most likely lead to a higher bounce rate. The aim should be to stay under 2.5 seconds to deliver an optimal user experience.

 

2. First Input Delay (FID)

When a user clicks on an interactive element on your webpage, and it takes too long for that action to trigger, your website’s overall user experience is impacted. With the help of the First Input Delay (FID) measure, you are able to track the performance of your website. According to Google, performance at or below 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds) is considered good, and anything taking longer than that implies that there’s a noticeable lag and needs improvement.

 

3. Cumulative Layout Shifts (CLS)

When an interactive element is clicked upon, nobody enjoys it when shifts its position or redirects them to an unrelated page. Thus, websites need to be responsive and load elements faster to reduce bounce rates and increase user sessions. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) helps you monitor such visual shifts in the website’s layout. To stay in the green and keep your customers happy, aim to achieve a score of 0.1 seconds or less in this metric.

Tools to Measure and Analyze Core Web Vital Scores

measure website performance with Google core web vitals
Get Quality Signals on Your Web Page Performance

Before you invest in any tool, make sure to understand how the Core Web Vitals are measured so that you can compare the results and make informed decisions. The most powerful tool is the Chrome User Experience Tool, which reports directly on each of the vitals. Other tools such as Chrome DevTools, Google Search Console, Lighthouse, DeepCrawl, PageSpeed Insights, Web Vitals Chrome extensions, etc. are also excellent. To start, these tools will help you breakdown the web vitals into measured elements. But just understanding the factors involved is not enough, make sure to test and compare the results with alternate tools to ensure that the numbers are accurate before you act on the results.

How Do Core Web Vitals Impact SEO Performance?

Core Web Vitals are a critical component of your technical SEO. However, to improve performance scores you need to do more than just send your developer a list of metrics to fix. Without any context of the elements that need fixing, you will not be able to see any web performance improvements. Instead, make a list of all measured Core Web Vital elements to provide your developer with granular recommendations to improve your scores.

Why Should B2B Tech Organizations Care About Core Web Vitals?

Every B2B tech business aims to improve its website search rankings. With Google’s latest update, it’s imperative to pay closer attention to the user interface and enhance the website’s user experience. Solely focusing on optimizing content won’t be enough to reach a greater audience and achieve those desired search results’ improvements.

 

Also, it’s challenging to improve the organic search ranking of the website overnight. Consistency is the key, and it’s equally important to constantly experiment to optimize and improve the overall experience of your website. The sooner you adapt and improve upon the measurements recommended by Google, the better it will be for you to evaluate where your website stands and plan for improvements. It will also help you gain a competitive edge in the oversaturated software services industry.

Improve Website Design Based on Web Vital Measurements

Improve the design of your website with core web vitals
Improve On Your Web Page Performance

Here are some simple best practices to keep in mind while measuring the Core Web Vitals for your website and making educated judgments to improve website design:

 

  • Internet Speed or Server Issues: This is one thing that you cannot control. While testing the speed of your website, make sure that you are monitoring the speed of your internet as well to observe how the performance is impacted. Your website’s performance can be severely penalized due to server issues. Therefore, it’s necessary to monitor the performance over time to make the required adjustments.
  • Optimizing Website Content: Content such as text, images, videos, icons, etc. need to be formatted to render properly on different devices and browsers.
  • Cut Out Unnecessary Code: Only keep the code that is empirical to load the website and track insights. Additional or less important JavaScripts can impact the performance adversely. By cleaning up your code, you can improve website speed significantly.
  • Be Mindful of Lazy Loads & Preload Key Elements: Move all the lesser important images and videos below the fold. By using the lazy load method, you can make less important visuals load at a regular speed, thus not directly impacting the user experience. You can also ensure that elements such as the webpage font and hero images are preloaded on the browser to improve your Largest Contentful Paint score. HOT TIP: Remember to design and categorize your webpage according to the hierarchy of content to achieve a seamless flow.

For More Web Performance Tips Talk To A Maven

With the help of these tips, you can consciously take action to improve the performance of your website and provide an excellent user experience for every client and prospective customer. That, paired with a robust SEO strategy will help your website rank higher on Google’s search and maintain that position.

 

If you want to get professional assistance to evaluate your B2B website’s ranking and optimize its performance, make sure to reach out to the seasoned marketing experts at Maven Collective Marketing. Our skilled team of marketing mavens will set you in the right direction to build and grow your B2B business with a captivating website that delivers a seamless experience. Reach out for a free consultation today!

Virtual Event Engagement: Is Your Audience Actually Listening?

Boost Your B2B Virtual Event Engagement

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

Intended Audience: Microsoft Partners, SaaS Owners, B2B Marketers

Virtual Events have been evergrowing since work from home (WFH) became a reality for the majority of working adults since the outbreak of COVID-19.   Trying to stay connected and informed has now been transformed to screens, rather than days long conferences and all-day in-person meetings.

 

Given this facilitating virtual events is a skill set most organizations had to add to their toolkit to keep the doors open and the lights on. Thanks to the rapid evolvement of technologies, such as Microsoft Teams and dedicated webinar platforms (e.g. GoToWebinar, Zoom Webinar, Microsoft Teams LIVE Events), one can easily host and attend virtual conferences and seminars, globally, with just a click of a button, from the comfort and safety of their home.

 

To successfully organize a virtual event and make it an experience to remember for all the participants, it’s necessary to curate visually appealing and informative content to grab attendees’ attention and hold on to it for the duration of the event. Create an engaging environment that encourages people to utilize all their senses to help combat participation fatigue. When such elements are planned well, virtual events can be extremely cost-efficient, easier to manage than live sessions, and help you generate leads and drive results.

virtual event - live conference
Hosting an Interactive Virtual Conference

Let’s look at what you can do at different stages of a virtual event to offer your audience an enriching experience.

Tips to Drive That Virtual Event Engagement

Pre-Session Activities

  1. Finding the right platform to host your event. How do you know if the platform you selected is right for your business? It all boils down to your target audience. Consider the comfort level of your audience with the platform you select: how many people can you accommodate in your virtual event, and/or if the platform offers interactive features or analytics to track the success of your event.

  2. Once you have selected the right platform, you must set a theme or objective for the event around which you can plan your content. If you plan to have multiple speakers, make sure to provide them plenty of time so that they can curate their content and practice to captivate the target audience virtually.

  3. Building your social media strategy is equally important as organizing or planning the nitty-gritty of the virtual conference. With the right social media strategy, you can boost the presence of your virtual event or conference on various platforms and share valuable information (e.g.  speaker line-up, contest alerts, and registration/ticketing info). To create hype and reach the right audience, you need to strategically plan your posts, use relevant hashtags, geo-target the posts, and optimize the content. Most importantly, make sure to find the right balance to build that rapport with your audience to form genuine connection and engagement.
virtual event social media engagement
Promote Your Virtual Event Across Social Channels

In-Session Engagement Ideas

Staring at a screen continuously for an hour or more can be draining. Here is how you can make the experience worth their while:

  1. Add interactive elements like ice breaker sessions, in-session polls, quizzes, live Q&A sessions, and more. This will encourage people to interact with the speakers and fellow audience members during the virtual conference/event. It will also provide an opportunity for people to share their experiences and learn from each other, which will help build a strong mental association with your business’s product and services.

  2. Help the moderator and speakers interact with your audience during the conference by sharing or posting sneak peeks and by live-tweeting. In addition to that always be prepared to tackle any technical glitches that may arise and do not forget to plan for backups.

If you feel that your audience is split between two or more social media platforms, you could also choose to stream the conference on those platforms.

Post-Session Follow-Ups

After an event, it’s also important to gauge its success. Here are some ways you can keep their interest alive:

  1. Depending upon the nature of the event and its exclusivity, timely archive or share the recording of your event. If you were hosting an exclusive event and felt that you got a positive response, you could also choose to hold one-on-one sessions or create a series of such events to dive deep into all the important topics that resonate with your audience.

  2. Gaining valuable feedback from the audience is an effective way to get a pulse of the situation. This feedback will not just help you improve the quality of your future sessions but also enlighten you about potential opportunities that you can explore to expand your business.

  3. You should review the analytics information generated through your posts and content to measure performance and identify the type of content that’s appreciated by your audience.

  4. Creating a blog or downloadable resource post the virtual event is an effective way to recap all that was covered. It’s a powerful tool to attrat the attendees and even new prospective audiences to your website for more details.
virtual event reports
Always Look At Performance Metrics for Actionable Improvement Ideas

Need Help Driving Virtual Event Engagement?

If you are planning to host your first virtual conference or looking for ways to improve and grow your virtual event’s reach, Maven Collective Marketing has the expertise to run value-driven events for your organization. Right from planning to execution, Maven Collective Marketing has got you covered. Our experts will walk you through all the performance metrics and help generate exciting ideas to set up your B2B virtual event or conference and drive engagement.

 

To learn more about how the Mavens can help you with your B2B virtual event, simply reach out to us today!