Google has developed its own set of metrics for assessing the value of the web. A user’s experience on your website depends on how you score in each of these metrics, according to Google. Optimizing your website according to core web vitals is what you need to do in order to improve rankings in the SERP and increase conversion rates for users visiting your site. Using this strategy, you can generate highly effective results.
Basically, Core Web Vitals is a measure of how fast your page loads and how the site moves while loading. A range of sub metrics is recommended by Google to provide the most accurate measure of speed: the first input delay, largest contentful paint, etc. are mainly used to understand how quickly your site loads and how the user experience is during the loading process.
Your Core Web Vitals scores are presented using color-coding.
- Green: indicates you have a good UX design and that Google and users like it.
- Orange: indicates that you need some improvement. If this value is below the recommended level, you are doing something wrong on your page. You can increase this value with various optimizations.
- Red: This color, which signifies “poor”, is usually displayed on pages that load too slowly, with too high layout shifts during loading.
Why are Core Web Vitals important?
Core Web Vitals have been confirmed by Google to be ranking factors: Hey, Google says these metrics will be considered when determining rankings. It should be important to optimize Core Web Vitals for users who care about their digital visibility and want to easily stand out from their competition.
But there’s more to it. Sure, it’s important to get good rankings. You will be able to get priority over other sites for users searching for certain keywords because of this ranking. Your share of the SEO visibility pie will increase, thus increasing your sales. However, every visitor to your site does not become one of your regular followers or customers, right? The majority of people visiting an e-commerce website leave without shopping, according to many studies. Due to the abundance of options, abandoned cart rates are increasing every day and the conversion of visitors to loyal customers is declining. Your visitors will be distracted by too many variables and competitors.
That’s the point of solid Core Web Vitals. Having a high score means not only being able to attract traffic but also being able to convince that traffic to convert. This makes getting the best results a lot simpler.
A Look at Core Web Vitals
It is now time to take a closer look at the metrics on each Core Web Vital. Despite the fact that the Overall scores complement each other, each of these metrics offers you a new perspective on your site. Largest Contentful Paint, for example, measures how much content is loaded. We will cover some vital metrics in this post.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This is one of the best ways to accurately measure how fast your website loads content. To measure the LCP, which measures how long a user should wait to see the content, most of the basic content will need to be loaded. Basically, the content should load enough so that the user can understand and review it. The LCP is the first point at which this burden appears.
LCP does not care when a container is loaded for the first time, but when the page is able to comprehend and interact with the content as soon as it is loaded. Therefore, this metric is crucial to understanding the content loading rate as perceived by a user.
Improving Your Website’s LCP Score
Here are some tips on how you can improve your website’s LCP Score:
- Don’t host unnecessary third-party scripts on your website. It is more likely that such issues will appear in Javascript or HTML source codes created with external libraries. Your page will slow down as a result of certain background downloads.
- You may experience loading time delays if your page elements are unnecessarily large. The format also affects the size of your page elements. It is much faster to load images in JPEG format rather than PNG. To reduce the size of other file types, it may be useful to compress or minify them.
- Ensure that the settings for Lazy loading images are set. By doing so, the images at the bottom of the page will not negatively impact the speed of your page. They will only load when a user scrolls down the page. The server will not be overloaded.
- When selecting hosting services, ensure that they are located close to you and that their configurations are solid. This allows for faster loading and more requests. In order to achieve a better core web, vitals score and LCP result, make sure you choose the right host.
First Input Delay (FID)
An important metric for measuring website performance is the First Input Delay (FID). A user must wait a certain amount of time before they can be rewarded after taking an action on your website. Providing an interactive site that allows users to click on buttons and scroll easily is crucial to a good user experience.
Enhancing Your Website’s FID Score
- Remove non-critical third-party scripts if possible. These scripts can slow down the loading time on your site. Installing in the background can increase the amount of work the server has to perform, making it impossible to respond to interaction.
- Reduce the size of Javascript, CSS, and HTML files. Reduce the load on your web pages and use the storage space more efficiently by minifying your files. This will increase your speed and reduce interactivity time and the load on your pages. Plugins can be used for this, or you can use an external tool to perform the minification process.
- Depending on the user’s browsing habits, your site may load much faster if you use browser cache. During this time, your site is active and responding to button clicks and scroll requests as the current version is being loaded. The results will be stronger in a shorter period of time, and your FID score will be optimized. JS loading is generally sped up through caching.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Think about entering a website: When the site first loads, it has a certain appearance, but as loading continues, it looks different and the place you are about to click moves somewhere else. Mobile and desktop users may find this frustrating. The cumulative layout shift is a visual change that occurs as your site loads. The changes can cause the user to lose track of the direction of the content, buttons, and headings on the website. In order to provide a professional experience to your customers, the shift rate from the first load to full load of your site should be below.
How you can Improve your Site’s CLS Score:
- It is important to realize that CLS is caused by the content that is added to your website. Thus, it might be a good idea to start by adjusting the media content’s dimensions. This may include many different types of content. The term media content can be used to refer to videos, images, GIFs, infographics, etc. In order to avoid CLS on your fully loaded page, these contents need to be loaded in the correct format and size.
- Second, reserve a space for advertisements. In the absence of this step, names can be posted at any time on your page, which can seriously damage the content experience. This is why you should pay attention to where each name is placed on your page.
- Adding new UI elements could also be a good idea. What do users want to see? Is your site meeting their needs? Provide services to meet their needs.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
You can use First Contentful Paint to determine the time elapsed after your website has fully loaded until the first time your content appears. The content structure can be anything you wish. The FCP calculation can include text, images, or different types of content. Once the rendering process has begun and the first byte of the content in question has been loaded, the presence of FCP becomes apparent.
Improving Your Website’s FCP Score
- To begin with, minifying CSS, Javascript, and HTML files is highly recommended.
- Furthermore, eliminating render-blocking resources will make your FCP score higher and the loading process easier. This may negatively affect load time if your DOM is too large. FCP will suffer as a result.
- Reduce the number of page redirects on your page as soon as possible. This may slow down the loading and rendering of your page.
Wrapping Up
The Google user experience has always been centered around the user. By removing keyword stuffing, making page load time a ranking factor, and implementing mobile-first ranking, they have continuously improved the user experience. Core Web Vitals are just another step in that direction. Some websites with poor user experiences will be negatively affected by Core Web Vitals SEO. Nevertheless, most websites with great user experience will not be affected by it. Because Google still prioritizes other elements in its search ranking algorithm, like the quality of a page’s content.
To achieve high search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, focus on creating high-quality, topic-specific content that is aligned with search intent and thoroughly covered. After that, you can focus on improving pages for Core Web Vital metrics to boost organic traffic even more.
