#No matter what Moz or Sam says
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Okay, but Sam's shitty photoshop doesn't mean Bonfire is coming out, guys
#Why on earth do people think this#Clearly there's a lot more going on#And Moz is being too difficult about everything for all that to be overcome#Big sighs#It's just getting to me cause everyone on twitter is celebrating like#But that lady from Capitol records probably had nothing to do with the release#We all saw how ornery he was about Victoria#And then on top of that he for some reason has decided self releasing albums is beneath him#I guess i get it#Moz has always had a huge hard on for certain record labels like#It's a prestige thing#I'm so famous that this label published me#He went on about that for a while in Autobiography#For the rare label attached to Quarry#Attack was it?#Where it was like oh these special bands have had albums released by them#So i must have a record released by them too#It's just like#We're well past any labels wanting to work with Moz#He's just a lot to handle we all know this#That's why we're all here thirsting over him this many years on but god#It is frustrating at times#There's just no way Bonfire is coming out or Without Music#I don't know if it's like#Until he dies or what but#As is that lady leaving isn't the answer#No matter what Moz or Sam says#moz
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48 Experts From The Marketing World Reveal Their Favorite SEO Tool
SEO helps the Search Engines find out what each page is about, and how it can be beneficial for users.
So, is it possible to deny its importance? Absolutely not!
What about finding a right SEO tool? This becomes a bit difficult as there are numerous present and in this sort of troubled situation, experts’ preferences can make a way out.
On the way, we approached 48 experts known for transforming businesses and asked them about their favorite SEO tool.
The question was, “Which one do you see as the best & most effective SEO tool?”
And, it was great to hear back from the prolific professionals offering answers on their favorites. Now, it’s time we meet both, the experts and their favorite tools.
Some experts have shared more than 1 favorites.
Our Experts
Jeff Bullas Favorite SEO Tool:Yoast SEO
Jeff Bullas is a Blogger at jeffbullas.com and his expertise lies in Social Media, Content and Digital Marketing.
Catch Jeff on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how to run a business extraordinarily in a digital world!
“The best tool is the one that works and is easy to use. The Yoast SEO tool we have been using for years and with 60% of our traffic today from search engines generating hundreds of thousands of page views from organic search per month we are more than happy.”
He has been listed amongst Businessweek’s Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs and owns a fascination with Search, making contribution to blogs in marketing & technology. Find Rand’s books on SEO here.
“Right now, my favorite tool is Keyword Explorer because it does such a good job of surfacing hard-to-find keyword opportunities and then helping to prioritize which ones matter most. It’s the tool I use most often for content creation and SEO strategy, because it helps give me a sense of the market, the competition, and the best places to start.”
This Seattle-based entrepreneur has founded one of the 100 most brilliant companies and is best known for helping brands/businesses grow using his verified & innovative marketing techniques.
Catch Neil on Twitter and LinkedIn for eclectic mix of digital marketing tips!
“Ahrefs and SEMrush are our two favorites.”
Sam Hurley Favorite SEO Tool:Long Tail Pro, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Majestic SEO
Sam Hurley is a lateral-thinking Digital Marketer and Founder of Digital Marketing Consultancy:Optim-eyez.
He has been ranked as the world’s #1 digital influencer by Webinale, #2 most influential digital marketer by Onalytica and #3 content marketing influencer by ScribbleLive.
Catch him on Twitter and LinkedIn for heaps of helpful material on entrepreneurship and marketing!
“Longtail Pro is AWESOME for keyword opportunities, SEMrush for organic monitoring and AHREFS + Majestic for link analysis! That’s an arsenal of tools fit for any SEO enthusiast.”
He holds 20+ years of experience in professional SEO and Internet marketing consulting and is dignified as the foremost expert on Google’s patents for SEO.
“Screaming Frog is the SEO tool I use the most, and I rely upon it.”
Larry Kim is an influential Internet consultant and Founder & CEO of WordStream.
He got privileged as the most influential PPC expert in 2015, 2014 and 2013 as per the PPC Hero Blog and is seen as a broadly popular pay per click expert.
A frequent contributor to Forbes, Inc., Search Engine Land and other blogs, Larry is the author of four award-winning books on software development.
Catch Larry on Twitter & LinkedIn to share his interest with marketing unicorns!
“Moz and SEMrush are great!”
Catch Daniel on Twitter & LinkedIn to know all, necessary in the digital marketing vertical!
“I find Yoast SEO very helpful.”
With a unique insight into running an Internet business, Ana shares brilliant traffic generation strategies and is the right person to let you know how to get BIG website traffic, in a convenient & reasonable way.
Catch Ana on Twitter and LinkedIn to get actionable traffic conversion ideas for small marketing budgets!
Kristi Hines Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
She has 6+ years of experience in the digital industry and works as a guest author for Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Watch, and Social Media Examiner and her articles have been featured on other well-recognized online publications as well. Find Kristi’s books here.
He is an avid content marketer with proficiency in drafting long-form content, email marketing, SEO, and more. Though, he loves to play bass guitar (Galsband) and keeps on contributing on several online platforms.
Catch Ben on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how to create right content for right people!
Toby Jenkins Favorite SEO Tool:Keywordtool.io
He has been listed amongst Dynamic Business’s 2010 Young Guns list of young entrepreneurs and is a popular keynote speaker and corporate MC.
Catch Toby on Twitter and LinkedIn for web strategy helps and effective edge management & business practices!
“I’d say I really like keywordtool.io for SEO keyword research.”
Brian Halligan Favorite SEO Tool:HubSpot
Brian Halligan is a famed Inbound Marketer and Co-founder & CEO of HubSpot.
He got named Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011, a Glassdoor 25 Highest Rated CEO in 2014 and 2015, and an Inc. Founders 40 in 2016.
Catch Brian on Twitter and LinkedIn for excellent Inbound Marketing & Sales lessons!
Catch Lee on Twitter and LinkedIn to become attached to the Internet Marketing!
“This is a tough question because SEO has so many different needs for tools. I am a big fan of SEMrush, BuzzSumo, Majestic, ubersuggest, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Searchmetrics, Moz and of course Google Analytics and Search Console.”
Michael J. Schiemer Favorite SEO Tool:Yoast SEO
Michael J. Schiemer is a Frugal Entrepreneur and Digital Marketing Manager at Bootstrap Business.
He has been chosen amongst Top 100 Social Media Marketing Specialist, Top 20 Business Bloggers; and is named as a prominent digital strategist & social media specialist.
Catch Michael on Twitter and LinkedIn to get through empowered marketing pitches and motivation!
“I think Yoast SEO is a simple yet effective tool for most WordPress websites because of its ease of use even for beginners. Most amateurs that run their own WordPress website don’t know how to code or maximize their on-page SEO so it helps to level the playing field a bit.”
Takeshi Young Favorite SEO Tool: Keyword Suggestion Tool
He is an experienced online marketer with 7+ years of work involvement and specifies in SEO, CRO, content marketing and social media marketing. He also owns 15+ years of experience in web designing and web development.
Catch Takeshi on Twitter & LinkedIn to witness his sharp intellect and passion for SEO!
Wade McMaster Favorite SEO Tool:Majestic SEO
Wade McMaster is a Marketer and Writing and Editing Professional at wademcmaster.com.
He has 15+ years of experience in graphic and web designing and always remains on top of the ideas.
Catch Wade on Twitter and LinkedIn to help you with your website and branding!
“I have been using Majestic SEO lately, I like that tool.”
Nakul Goyal Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Nakul Goyal is the Director of Marketing & SEO at CARFAX.
He has 15+ years of experience in Search and is seen as an E-commerce professional in the industry.
Catch Nakul on Twitter and LinkedIn to come across all aspects of SEO, inbound marketing and growth hacking techniques.
Ann Handley Favorite SEO Tool: Content
Catch Ann on Twitter and LinkedIn to get free insights for writing good content that attracts and retains customers!
“The most effective SEO tool is great content!”
Adam Franklin Favorite SEO Tool:Keywordtool.io
He conveys digital marketing ideas and strategy workshops and is a prominent Social Media speaker. He has also co-authored “Web Marketing That Works.”
Catch Adam on Twitter and LinkedIn for practical tips on using the web to boost your business!
“My favourite SEO tool is KeywordToo.io because it allows me to find out exactly what keyword phrases people are searching for.”
Joe Williams Favorite SEO Tool:SEO Monitor
Joe Williams is a digital marketing consultant and Founder, Managing Director, Chief SEO Trainer and Blogger at Zen Optimise.
He entered into SEO world in the year 2004 and has continued on dispelling the myths & hypes present in the sphere. And, how to design and deliver exceptional digital marketing courses is his one more specialty.
Catch Joe on Twitter and LinkedIn to know what this sharer of SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media has for you!
“SEO Monitor is a tool that I have recently discovered and really like. As well as covering keyword rankings, it offers deep SEO insights and intelligence as well.”
Gael Breton Favorite SEO Tool:Ahrefs
Gael Breton is a complete Online Marketer and Founder & Chief Editor at Authority Hacker.
He is widely recognized for sharing the tips & secrets brands/businesses use to build authority sites to generate the income.
Catch Gael on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how to grow authority sites ethically yet efficiently.
“I used to use a lot of tools for various tasks. Link building, competitor research, keyword research etc. But lately Ahrefs has been developing a LOT of amazing features and they have effectively replaced most of the tools we used to use. Their new keyword explorer together with their database of keywords sites rank for are ALL you need for keyword research (they even have keyword difficulty now), their index of links is one of the bests in the market, they have a rank tracker, their content explorer actually does a better job than BuzzSumo, they’re really the tool to have these days!”
Patrick Coombe Favorite SEO Tool:Google Keyword Planner
He is a brilliant inbound marketer and web developer and can be seen blogging at ‘Moz’ and other places. Patrick’s book “Learn SEO: An On-Page SEO Tutorial” is a must have for those who wish to have illustrated details.
Catch Patrick on Twitter and LinkedIn to taste chock full of SEO goodness!
Nyagoslav Zhekov Favorite SEO Tool:Whitespark
Nyagoslav Zhekov is the Director of Local Search at Whitespark.
He is an International Local SEO with 5+ years of experience in the marketing sphere and his favorite topics are: Problems with Google Places, local search statistics, and online maps spam. He is also a guest author for SearchEnginePeople.com.
Catch Nyagoslav on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how much he is in love with Local SEO!
Chad Pollitt Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Chad Pollitt is a known Digital Marketer, Author, Internet Speaker and Co-founder & VP of Relevance and chadpollitt.com.
He has been a decorated veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and former US Commander.
Listed amongst Top 20 CMO Influencers, Chad holds 15+ years of marketing experience and specializes in creating profitable online marketing campaigns. He has also authored “The Content Promotion Manifesto” and “51 Things Your Mother Taught You about Inbound Marketing” and is a regular contributor to Huffington Post, Guardian and Social Media Today.
Catch Chad on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep a track of gainful web marketing strategies!
Mandy McEwen Favorite SEO Tool:Ubersuggest.io
Mandy McEwen is a full time digital marketing consultant & entrepreneur and Founder & President, Author, Blogger at Mod Girl Marketing.
A full time digital marketing consultant/entrepreneur, Mandy helps businesses increase their revenues tremendously via Inbound Marketing, SEO and Content Marketing.
Catch Mandy on Twitter and LinkedIn to know superb marketing tactics that actually work!
“I use a variety of keyword tools, paid and free. My favorite free tool is Ubersuggest.io. It’s a quick and easy way to find great long-tail keywords, leveraging the power of “Google Suggest.”
Zac Johnson Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
He is seen as a self-taught entrepreneur and holds 17+ years of experience. Additionally he reviews affiliate networks and informs readers about making money online. He helps you bring your business to a new level using creative content, marketing and social media tactics. He has also authored Blogging Tips: Confessions of a Six Figure Blogger.
“I personally like SEMrush because of the many different tools and tracking reports it provides. I like how when I log into my account I can see an overview all of the sites I’m tracking, while also running SEO site audits and keeping an eye on the competition in the process. It’s also a great tool for coming up with new keywords that your competition is ranking for, which you can aggressively act on.”
Marie Haynes Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Catch Marie on Twitter and LinkedIn for understanding Google’s algorithm changes!
“I’ve been really impressed lately by SEMrush. I recently needed to find historical ranking data and was pleased to find that SEMrush had the data I needed going as far back as 2012. I don’t think there is one all encompassing tool that is the “best tool for SEO” but right now my toolset includes SEMrush, Ahrefs, Majestic, Open Site Explorer and Google Search Console.”
Bill Sebald Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
With 20+ years of experience in SEO and paid search, he loves the community, challenges, & detective work in the digital marketing industry. He is also experienced with affiliate marketing, web design / developing, graphic design.
Catch Bill on Twitter and LinkedIn to get insights for advanced SEO, blogging and branding practices!
Brian Jackson Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Brian Jackson is an Internet Marketer and Founder & Blogger at and Director of Inbound Marketing at Kinsta.
An entrepreneur and WordPress Lover, Brian provides tips and tutorials on SEO, PPC, Social Media, SaaS, Lead Generation, Web Perf, Growth Hacking and other topics in Internet marketing.
He has also developed a WordPress plugin, WP Coupons to help bloggers and affiliate marketers.
Catch Brian on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how much he is addicted to Internet Marketing!
Chris Hubbard Favorite SEO Tool:Moz Keyword Explorer
Chris Hubbard is an Interactive Marketer and Founder & Director of Digital Slingshot.
He is an SEO master & Yahoo Search Ambassador and has more than 16 years of experience in Internet Marketing. Additionally proficient in improving conversion, he enjoys working on PPC and SEO.
Catch Chris on Twitter and LinkedIn for effective On-page SEO, Analytics, Reporting, Online Advertising, CRO tips!
Mossa Hemani Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Moosa Hemani is a digital strategist and CEO and Founder of SETalks.
He has 9+ years of experience in SEO and Inbound Marketing and is known for helping businesses to brand themselves and grow using different marketing channels. He also works as a guest author for several other blogs.
Catch Moosa on Twitter and LinkedIn for tips on making your online visibility pronounced!
Jignesh Gohel Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
He has 10+ years of experience in Ecommerce marketing and is best at helping small, medium and large businesses to strengthen their brand’s online presence. He is skilled in generating positive ROI for brands and has worked on Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Facebook ads, Linkedin, AdRoll & all popular paid marketing platforms.
Catch Jignesh on Twitter and LinkedIn for secrets of successful marketing campaigns!
David Schneider Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
David (Dave) Schneider is Co-founder and CEO of NinjaOutreach, a blogger prospecting and outreach software.
He is here to take your business to the next level and holds expertise in streamlining the process of connecting with influencers.
Catch Dave on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how to find influencers, build relationships and measure results in a best possible way!
Evan Dunn Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
Evan Dunn is a Data-driven Marketing Strategist and Director of Marketing Services at Transform, Inc. and Blogger at .
He knows how to grow your social audience with targeted and influential new leads and is seen as a skilled Social + Content Strategist. He is also seen as an expert Growth Hacker
Catch Evan on Twitter and LinkedIn for expert tips on digital-centric business growth!
Michael Brenner Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
He is an expert marketing strategist, author and speaker at events and knows all; digital marketing strategies, social business, content marketing, social media, personal branding and so on. He keeps on contr/ibuting to leading publications and has also co-authored the bestselling book, “The Content Formula.”
Catch Michael on Twitter and LinkedIn to know marketing stuff that matters and has impact!
Harsh Agrawal Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
Harsh Agrawal is an Infopreneur and Professional Blogger and Founder & CEO of Shout Me Loud.
He is considered amongst the top most inspirational bloggers and loves to share blogging and marketing tips to the newbies in the town.
Patrick Delehanty Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Patrick Delehanty is a Digital Marketing Specialist at Marcel Digital.
With extensively ranging talent in Internet Marketing, he is known for getting results defined by customers’ goals. He has 4+ years of experience in the industry and also contributes to Moz, Google+, USA Today, Paste Magazine, GrowthHackers and other blogs.
Andrew Shotland Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
He shares ranking tips with clients and is a regular columnist at Search Engine Land. He has also taken care of NBC’s Internet Division and run NBC. Com, presenting some of the TV to Web experiences.
Catch Andrew on Twitter and LinkedIn to learn how SEO is made simple and further its implementation to trap benefits!
Jamie Spencer Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
He has been featured on Inc, JeffBullas, Adweek and so on and he holds expertise in creating wide varieties of blogs. He is known for offering help to create and run a blog with more functionality, through detailed step by step tutorials.
Catch Jamie on Twitter for Search Engine Optimization, Local Search and Web Strategy tips!
Harris Schachter Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
Harris Schachter is a hybrid marketer and Sr. SEO Product Manager at Capital One and Founder of Optimize Prime.
He is also a technologist and enjoys working with search, social, analytics, UX, content and conversion and brings workable marketing tips for you.
Catch Harris on Twitter and LinkedIn for results-driven marketing strategies.
Dennis Seymour Favorite SEO Tool:Google Keyword Planner
Dennis Seymour is an Internet Marketer and SEO Consultant and Founder & CEO of Leapfroggr.
He loves SEO and brings proven online marketing strategies that work for digital entrepreneurs & businesses. Link Building, Analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), Tools, Business Practices are few of his favorite topics.
Catch Dennis on Twitter and LinkedIn for effective Search Engine Marketing tips!
Marcus Miller Favorite SEO Tool:BuzzSumo
Marcus Miller is an SEO & Digital Marketing Strategist and founder of bowlerhat.co.uk.
With 17+ years of experience, He is considered as a known name amongst SEO and PPC consultants and helps businesses dominate search and social sphere. He also runs wArmour aka WordPress Armour which focuses on helping WordPress owners and is an author at Search Engine Land.
Catch Marcus on Twitter and LinkedIn to know how to take your marketing to the next level!
Freddie Chatt Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
Freddie Chatt is an Internet Marketer and SEO & International Manager at amara.com and Ecommerce SEO & Content Maverick at ecomhacker.com.
He is a widely recognized SEO expert and also brings tips for all your e-commerce growth needs.
Martijn Scheijbeler Favorite SEO Tool: SEMrush
Martijn Scheijbeler is the Director of Marketing at The Next Web.
He is exceptional in bringing marketing strategies and helps clients create best experiences for both search engines and users. His other specialties include Web Analytics, (Big site) SEO, CRO, PPC, Google Adwords, Tag Management, Bing Ads, Link building and more.
Catch Martijn on Twitter and LinkedIn to know best of the Audience Development, Product Marketing, SEO, Google Analytics and CRO strategies!
Andy Crestodina Favorite SEO Tool:Moz Keyword Explorer
Andy Crestodina is an adored Internet Marketer and Co-Founder and Strategic Director of Orbit Media.
He is a true evangelist for content marketing and ethical digital marketing. With expertise in web designing and interactive marketing sphere, he also works as a Speaker at National Conferences & is a contributor on platforms like: SocialMedia Examiner, Content Marketing World He has also authored “Content Chemistry: An Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing,” a popular book with effective marketing lessons.
Catch Andy on Twitter and LinkedIn for powerful Content, SEO, Social Media and Analytics Strategies!
Paul Shapiro Favorite SEO Tool:SEMrush
Paul Shapiro is a Technical Marketer & Programmer and Director of Strategy & Innovation at Catalyst and Technical SEO Expert & blogger at Search Wilderness.
She is a search marketer that loves to take both, technical and creative approach to SEO and has become a popular face in advanced SEO/SEM.
Sue Anne Dunlevie Favorite SEO Tool:Long Tail Pro
Sue is an expert in creating plans of predictable revenues and helps you monetize your blog in the best way possible.
Catch Sue on Twitter to know how to make a profitable blog, without any guesswork!
Bill Gassett Favorite SEO Tool:Google Keyword Planner
He is a real estate veteran with enormous social media exposure and runs a highly visible website in local online searches.
Glad you reached up here!
48 opinions of distinguished marketers on their favorite SEO Tools. Hope it will be of help and would love to know your opinions in comments.
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Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
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Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/11343895
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Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
http://bit.ly/2Ymhl8L
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
Visualizing Speed Metrics to Improve SEO, UX, & Revenue - Whiteboard Friday
Posted by sam.marsden
We know how important page speed is to Google, but why is that, exactly? With increasing benefits to SEO, UX, and customer loyalty that inevitably translates to revenue, there are more reasons than ever to both focus on site speed and become adept at communicating its value to devs and stakeholders. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Sam Marsden takes us point-by-point through how Google understands speed metrics, the best ways to access and visualize that data, and why it all matters.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, Moz fans, and welcome to another Whiteboard Friday. My name is Sam Marsden, and I work as an SEO at web crawling platform DeepCrawl. Today we're going to be talking about how Google understands speed and also how we can visualize some of the performance metrics that they provide to benefit things like SEO, to improve user experience, and to ultimately generate more revenue from your site.
Google & speed
Let's start by taking a look at how Google actually understands speed. We all know that a faster site generally results in a better user experience. But Google hasn't actually directly been incorporating that into their algorithms until recently. It wasn't until the mobile speed update, back in July, that Google really started looking at speed. Now it's likely only a secondary ranking signal now, because relevance is always going to be much more important than how quickly the page actually loads.
But the interesting thing with this update was that Google has actually confirmed some of the details about how they understand speed. We know that it's a mix of lab and field data. They're bringing in lab data from Lighthouse, from the Chrome dev tools and mixing that with data from anonymized Chrome users. So this is available in the Chrome User Experience Report, otherwise known as CrUX.
CrUX metrics
Now this is a publicly available database, and it includes five different metrics. You've got first paint, which is when anything loads on the page. You've then got first contentful paint, which is when some text or an image loads. Then you've DOM content loaded, which is, as the name suggests, once the DOM is loaded. You've also got onload, which is when any additional scripts have loaded. That's kind of like the full page load. The fifth and final metric is first input delay, and that's the time between when a user interacts with your site to when the server actually responds to that.
These are the metrics that make up the CrUX database, and you can actually access this CrUX data in a number of different ways.
Where is CrUX data?
1. PageSpeed Insights
The first and easiest way is to go to PageSpeed Insights. Now you just plug in whatever page you're interested in, and it's going to return some of the CrUX metrics along with Lighthouse and a bunch of recommendations about how you can actually improve the performance of your site. That's really useful, but it just kind of provides a snapshot rather than it's not really good for ongoing monitoring as such.
2. CrUX dashboard
Another way that you can access CrUX data is through the CrUX dashboard, and this provides all of the five different metrics from the CrUX database. What it does is it looks at the percentage of page loads, splitting them out into slow, average, and fast loads. This also trends it from month to month so you can see how you're tracking, whether you're getting better or worse over time. So that's really good. But the problem with this is you can't actually manipulate the visualization of that data all that much.
3. Accessing the raw data
To do that and get the most out of the CrUX database, you need to query the raw data. Because it's a freely available database, you can query the database by creating a SQL query and then putting this into BigQuery and running it against the CrUX database. You can then export this into Google Sheets, and then that can be pulled into Data Studio and you can create all of these amazing graphs to visualize how speed is performing or the performance of your site over time.
It might sound like a bit of a complicated process, but there are a load of great guides out there. So you've got Paul Calvano, who has a number of video tutorials for getting started with this process. There's also Rick Viscomi, who's got a CrUX Cookbook, and what this is, is a number of templated SQL queries, where you just need to plug in the domains that you're interested in and then you can put this straight into BigQuery.
Also, if you wanted to automate this process, rather than exporting it into Google Sheets, you could pull this into Google Cloud Storage and also update the SQL query so this pulls in on a monthly basis. That's where you kind of want to get to with that.
Why visualize?
Once you've got to this stage and you're able to visualize the data, what should you actually do with it? Well, I've got a few different use cases here.
1. Get buy-in
The first is you can get buy-in from management, from clients, whoever you report into, for various optimization work. If you can show that you're flagging behind competitors, for example, that might be a good basis for getting some optimization initiatives rolling. You can also use the Revenue Impact Calculator, which is a really simple kind of Google tool which allows you to put in some various details about your site and then it shows you how much more money you could be making if your site was X% faster.
2. Inform devs
Once you've got the buy-in, you can use the CrUX visualizations to inform developers. What you want to do here is show exactly the areas that your site is falling down. Where are these problem areas? It might be, for example, that first contentful paint is suffering. You can go to the developers and say, "Hey, look, we need to fix this." If they come back and say, "Well, our independent tests show that the site is performing fine," you can point to the fact that it's from real users. This is how people are actually experiencing your site.
3. Communicate impact
Thirdly and finally, once you've got these optimization initiatives going, you can communicate the impacts that they're actually having on performance and also business metrics. You could trend these various performance metrics from month to month and then overlay various business metrics. You might want to look at conversion rates. You might want to look at bounce rates, etc. and showing those side-by-side so that you can see whether they're improving as the performance of the site is improving as well.
Faster site = better UX, better customer loyalty, and growing SEO benefit
These are different ways that you can visualize the CrUX database, and it's really worthwhile, because if you have a faster site, then it's going to result in better user experience. It's going to result in better customer loyalty, because if you're providing your users with a great experience, then they're actually more likely to come back to you rather than going to one of your competitors.
There's also a growing SEO benefit. We don't know how Google is going to change their algorithms going forward, but I wouldn't be surprised if speed is coming in more and more as a ranking signal.
This is how Google understands page speed, some ways that you can visualize the data from the CrUX database, and some of the reasons why you would want to do that.
I hope that's been helpful. It's been a pleasure doing this. Until the next time, thank you very much.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes