What are Core Web Vitals and why are they important?
Back at the end of May 2020, Google made an announcement that it would be rolling out a major Page Experience Update called the Core Web Vitals, based on research that demonstrates how users prefer sites with a great user experience. This new set of metrics is focused on the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page and is set to be rolled out into the core algorithm in 2021 becoming a ranking signal.
But there is no need to panic by the thought that you would get adversely affected by this rollout. Rather, according to a Jacksonville SEO company, you should take advantage of this opportunity to boost your rank and move your site ahead of competitors.
With still some time left, you can start looking into the problem areas and get ready for the upcoming change. This post will help you learn more about Core Web Vitals: what they are and why they are important and make changes to your website accordingly. So that you are ready once the changes take place. Here we go!
What are Core Web Vitals?
Said to be happening sometime in May 2021, Core Web Vitals are site performance metrics that basically measure the page load time, page stability time, and interactivity. They fit into a broader concept of Google’s Page Experience metrics and include signals like HTTPS, intrusive pop-ups, safe browsing, and more importantly mobile-friendliness. They are mainly made up of three major aspects that have a great impact on the user experience. These aspects are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Though Google features pages that are more efficient in delivering the content relevant to the user’s queries, these metrics are crucial as well. These metrics will not only help you boost your rank but also equate to more sales naturally.
So, to better understand what Google is really looking for and how these metrics are measured, let us discuss each of these metrics in detail.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint is a metric that measures the site loading, especially the time taken for the main content of the page to download and be ready to be interacted with. Specifically, it should be below 2.5 seconds. Images, video posters images, background images, or block-level text elements like paragraph texts are typical elements that are measured.
The reason behind choosing LCP as a key metric is that it accurately measures how fast a web page can be used. Most users tend to leave the site if it even takes a fraction of a second longer to load. Google also found an increase in bounce rate by 90% in pages that went from one second to five seconds to load. Being a very significant number, Google realizes how important loading speed is, thus making LCP one of the biggest factors in your website score.
A better LCP score means users can interact faster with your page. You can improve your LCP score by considering the following points.
- Remove third-party scripts that are not necessary.
- Upgrade to a better web host.
- Set up lazy loading that allows the elements to load only when someone scrolls down the page.
- Make sure to compress your images because you will generally notice pages that have the most images have the worst LCP score, if not optimized properly.
- Minify your CSS
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay or FID measures the time until interactivity is possible meaning the time from when the user tries to engage with the page to the time when the browser can actually respond to that interaction. In other words, it measures how long it takes to be able to do things like Operating the menu, clicking a link to visit another page, filling a form, using search features, etc. Whereas this metric does not deal with continuous interactions like scrolling or zooming.
If your buttons or forms take too long to respond, then there is a higher chance that the user will leave the site thus increasing your bounce rate. Hence improving your FID score is important. In general, a good FID score is less than 100 milliseconds while anything more than 300 milliseconds is considered poor. A score between 100 to 300 milliseconds needs improvement.
Here are few ways, you can consider to improve the FID score:
- Removing unnecessary third-party scripts
- Minimizing JavaScript
- Establishing a browser cache that will allow the content to load faster for the return visitors.
- Minimize main thread word
- Shorten the JavaScript execution time
- Keep the number of requests low
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric measures the visual stability of the website that refers to how your page moves around when it loads.
Have you ever visited a website that tried tapping a link or button but you ended up clicking on something else as suddenly the content moved? These kinds of experiences are quite annoying and, in some cases, can cause real damage too. They usually happen when the page is loading and the kind of elements that tend to cause these shifts are images without dimensions, ads, embeds, iframes without dimensions, dynamically injected content, and web fonts. Additionally, actions waiting for a network response before updating DOM are also responsible for these shifts. These unexpected layout shifts are very disruptive and inconvenient and lead to a poor user experience. Hence, improving your CLS score becomes crucial.
Any CLS score under 0.1 is considered good while a score between 0.1 and 0.25 needs improvement. But if you have a score above 0.25, you have a poor CLS. In such a case, take a look at the following points that will help you improve your CLS score.
- Make use of set size attributes for all media dimensions like images, GIFS, videos, etc. This will allow the browser to hold a place for these elements as everything on your page loads.
- If you are including any ad elements the reserve spaces for them.
- Add any new user interface elements below the fold to avoid alteration of the initial design when the user clicks on it.
- Avoid interstitial pop-ups
- Be careful while injecting dynamic content like email signup forms, GDPR notices, or similar elements.
- Look out for custom font loading.
When it comes to search engine rankings with SEO, user experience is also very important. These visual indicators along with existing text snippets and image previews will direct the users to the site that precisely provides them with what they need.
Reading all the above metrics you should have noticed that it sounds like the best practices you should already have implemented. Then what’s new? Well, this Page Experience update is not a set of new signals rather it is a reminder that Google always puts its searchers first. So, optimizing your website for these metrics should be your first priority.
Further in this post, we will learn more about this update’s importance.
Why are Core Web Vitals important?
Now, as Core Web Vitals will be a ranking factor from 2021 for websites, slow-loading websites and unresponsive pages will no longer be acceptable. Not prioritizing them will cost you your traffic and conversions.
More importantly, the fact that Google plans to make a page experience a ranking signal in itself makes Core Web Vitals more important. They make the mechanics of SEO more transparent by disclosing what you need to improve.
We all are aware of the fact that Google uses more than 200 factors for ranking web pages, that are not completely disclosed. But any new metric that it announces should be taken seriously.
If your site lags in some areas then optimizing your site for these metrics will be a quick win and a great way to rank your website higher on Google quickly with a relatively small amount of effort.
But note that these metrics are not meant to replace the existing ones. So you still need to create quality content and a responsive and secure website with other considerations too.
Conclusion
Google constantly shifts its approach and improves its algorithm to meet the user intent and the introduction of Core Web Vitals is one of those efforts. So, it is worth adopting them as soon as possible.
As we already know that these metrics are being rolled out, we will be hearing more and more about them. Though Core Web vitals may seem like a daunting task at first, you will become more and more familiar with them as you start dealing with them. Once you understand what Core Web Vitals are and what their importance is then it is just a matter of using the tools provided and managing them properly states the experts from the Internet Marketing Service. If things get tough for you there are many experts that you can approach for help.
However, we hope that this article by our SEO experts must have been of great help in getting a clear idea of this new update. So, just start fixing all the issues you find not compatible with this update and grab this chance of boosting your website rank.
