We are quickly approaching the end of 2021 and businesses are juggling both digital and privacy-related updates and trends. Businesses are challenged with the expansion of global privacy laws along with digital tech changes like planning for the deprecation of third-party cookies, adapting to Apple Tracking Transparency requirements, and the introduction of Global Privacy Control. But one thing has stayed the same – the high impact of a website.
Your website serves as the first impression to users and has a direct effect on the perceived credibility and quality of your business – and ultimately, trust. But first, users have to be able to find your business online to get there in the first place, which is directly linked to how high your website appears in search results. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of maximizing your website to get the highest possible rank in search, and there are many factors that impact SEO.
Register for the Webinar: Google Consent Mode & OneTrust CMP: Managing Advertiser Data & Cookies With Consent
For the last couple of months, it has been hard to wander in the field of technical SEO without touching or hearing about the Google Page Experience Update. Let’s dive into the updates and the importance of having an optimized cookie banner on your website.
Google’s 2021 page experience update
Earlier this year, Google rolled out an update to include page experience among the factors it uses to rank sites. Why is this important? According to Statista, in January 2021, Google was used for 91.83% of searches in just Canada. We pay attention to Google because we have to if we want people to be able to find our businesses online. Google already uses some aspects of user experience to assist in ranking websites, namely mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, and HTTPS security. With the May 2021 update, Google introduced three new metrics by which the page experience for websites will be assessed. These metrics, called core web vitals, are based on data aggregated by the Chrome User Experience Report.
- Load Time: Loading experience is measured by largest contentful paint (LCP), which measures the time it takes for the most important and relevant content to load on a web page. A load time of 3.5 seconds or less is considered to be optimal. Factors that can impact this include large images or third-party scripts.
- Interactivity: The measure by first input delay (FID) or the length of time it takes your page to respond to a user’s input. FID is measured in milliseconds, and the ideal delay time is 100 milliseconds or less.
- Visual Stability: This is measured with cumulative layout shift (CLS). CLS measures how stable your website is as each page loads. Google considers a CLS score below .1 to be acceptable.
Avoid tanking your SEO with a cookie consent tool built for performance
Not cluttering your website with unnecessary images, widgets and plugins will result in better user experiences, and it’s this user-focused approach that Google seeks to highlight. How do you balance Google’s algorithm with having to follow cookie banner regulatory requirements? Choose a solution that doesn’t negatively impact your performance, provides a user-friendly experience and helps you stay compliant at the same time.
The importance of solution availability
Knowing Google’s updates, what if a third-party script on your website stops working due to technical disruptions? That could cause chaos on your website and negatively impact your page load time and SEO. OneTrust guarantees a high degree of availability for the Cookie Consent solution through our 100% availability SLA. In addition to this, the solution is deployed globally via a Content Delivery Network for maximum reliability and performance.
OneTrust Cookie Consent: Dependable, reliable and optimized
With OneTrust’s Cookie Consent solution, also known as its Consent Management Platform (CMP), companies can build trust with customers using the most powerful and dependable consent solution in the market. With reliable support and technology such as a 100% availability SLA, automated change management for optimal performance, and global CDN and asynchronous script deployment, companies can maximize the performance of their CMP using OneTrust. Additionally, use server-side rendering to minimize payloads and accelerate page loads.
Stay tuned for the next posts in this blog series!
- Cookie Consent Performance Series: Part 2 – Asynchronous Loading
- Cookie Consent Performance Series: Part 2 – Server-Side Rendering
