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- What does Core Web Vitals mean for SEO
- Does Core Web Vitals Affect Ranking?
- How Do You Improve Your Core Web Vitals Score?
- Importance of Core Web Vitals
- Core Web Vitals Matter
Over 200 ranking factors, that’s how many elements SEO professionals must consider.
Optimization work is tedious and complex, and for those just starting out, a confusing motley of information. So it’s vital to choose your tasks carefully, prioritizing the ones that are likely to deliver more results with the least effort. Does Core Web Vitals fall under this category?
What does Core Web Vitals mean for SEO
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the user experience when interacting with a website, and they are considered important signals for search engines like Google.
For SEO, optimizing Core Web Vitals means improving the overall quality of your website, which can lead to better search engine visibility, ranking, and traffic.
By measuring aspects of user experience such as loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability, Core Web Vitals provide a more holistic view of a website's quality, beyond traditional on-page SEO signals like keywords, meta tags, and content quality.
In addition, Google has indicated that it will use Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor in its search algorithms, so optimizing these metrics can directly impact your website's search engine visibility and ranking.
Therefore, optimizing Core Web Vitals is becoming increasingly important for SEO, as it can improve the user experience, increase conversions, and improve search engine visibility, which can lead to more organic traffic and conversions.
Does Core Web Vitals Affect Ranking?
Core Web Vitals (CWV) are part of Google’s Page Experience update, which is a key component of doing effective technical SEO. CWV is a set of three-page speed metrics, measuring different aspects of how visitors experience pages on your website.
Under CWV, Google’s looking for:
- Page loading speed (largest contentful paint). This measures loading performance by determining the time it takes for the largest text or image element within the viewport to load.
- Interactivity (first input delay). It measures interactivity by determining the time from when a user first interacts with your site (i.e. when they click a link, tap on a button, etc.) to the time when the browser is able to respond to that interaction.
- Stability (cumulative layout shift). This measures visual stability by quantifying the unexpected layout shift of visible elements within the viewport. It helps to identify and fix layout issues that can make it difficult for users to interact with a page.
All of these metrics are used to measure the performance of a website and can be used to improve the user experience
Each metric specifies what’s a good score. For largest contentful paint (LCP), within 2.5 seconds is good; for first input delay (FID), it’s 100 milliseconds and for cumulative shift layout (CLS), it’s 0.1.
When your website racks up good scores on all three metrics, does that automatically push your site up the search engine ranking results? It’s a yes and a no.
The answer is “yes” because CWV helps you speed up your pages, allowing them to look and function right. All of which ensures a better user experience,and that helps your site rank better.
The answer is “no” because your CWV score may be good, but if your content and links don’t meet quality standards, your ranking may not be better.
The bottom line is that Core Web Vitals are helpful to improving your ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). But page speed is hardly the top factor for ranking on Google because it shares similar importance as: content quality, internal and external links, and mobile-first approach, among others.
In John Mueller’s tweet, Google ranks according to: “awesomeness.”
How do you get “awesome”?
How Do You Improve Your Core Web Vitals Score?
If you’ve run your website through Page Speed Insights and received poor scores on all three metrics, improvements are necessary.
Here are ways you can improve your CWV score.
Speed up server response
Server response time is critical to the site speed metric. How do you improve server response times?
First, look at your site hosting and see if an upgrade is in order. Maybe the shared server you’ve opted into isn’t working out and a dedicated one is necessary. If you’re using WordPress, consider a managed server that’s optimized for the content management system. Never use a cheap site hosting service.
Second, set up page caching because having frequently used data stored on your site speeds up server response times. Not only can users access the same information quickly, site caching also prevents browsers from using its resources to load the entire file.
Optimize your images
Visually-heavy websites are appealing to most users, but they can also slow down a website. But your website will only be kept back by visual content if the images aren’t optimized.
Resize and compress your images to speed up your site. Use WebP, JPEG, and PNG formats. With image compression, you reduce the size without losing quality. Use tools like Imagify, Smush, and ShortPixel to automatically optimize images.
Minify and remove unused CSS or scripts
Static in the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files can prevent users from viewing your content. These render-blocking elements damage user experience, so you’re going to need to eliminate them.
A good start would be to minify and remove unused CSS or scripts, which your web developer can do. Some free tools, like the CSSMinifier, also automatically minify CSS by placing the CSS and clicking a “minify button.” Your web developer may also combine JavaScript and CSS files to eliminate render-blocking elements.
Essentially, your developer is optimizing your site’s code to improve its CWV score.
Implement lazy loading
Lazy loading identifies resources as noncritical, and when it does, it loads those only when they’re necessary. It’s a strategy that shortens the rendering path, speeding up page load times.
For example, a massive image on a home page only loads when the user interacts with it or scrolls to it.
Reserve spaces for images and ads
Shifts in content are frustrating, even when a user isn’t in any hurry to get information from your website. If this happens often enough on your site, your CLS score could be classified as “poor” or “needs improvement.” So how do you improve your CLS score?
Add the height and width of your images and ads In CSS. This strategy tells browsers that they need to “reserve a space” for these elements, preventing shifts in the layout. Reserve space for the smallest size configured to serve as opposed to the largest size because the former eliminates excess blank spaces.
Use a content delivery network
A content delivery network (CDN) is best for businesses with global markets. CDNs are servers around the world that store content, delivering them to the nearest user. So if your customers in Thailand access your website, a network of servers in Thailand will do the work to prevent slow load times.
Other ways to fix your CWV score are optimizing fonts, delaying JavaScript loading and looking into third-party scripts that may be affecting how your pages load.
Importance of Core Web Vitals
- Improved User Experience. Optimizing Core Web Vitals can lead to faster loading times, smoother scrolling, and quick response times to user interactions, resulting in a better user experience.
- Better Search Engine Rankings. Google considers Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor, and optimizing them can improve your website's search engine visibility and ranking, which can drive more organic traffic to your site.
- Increased Conversion Rates.: A better user experience can lead to increased engagement, which can, in turn, lead to higher conversion rates.
- Better Mobile Experience. Core Web Vitals also focus on optimizing the mobile user experience, which is becoming increasingly important as more and more people access the internet on their mobile devices.
- Better Accessibility. Improving the loading time and stability of a website can make it more accessible to users with slow internet connections or those with disabilities, resulting in a more inclusive user experience.
Core Web Vitals Matter
Optimization work is a broad approach to improving your ranking on SERPs, and by extension, achieving your sales and marketing goals. There is no magic bullet to soaring to the top spot, which means fixing your Core Web Vitals is just one of many ways to gain online visibility, boost website traffic, and increase conversions.
Yes, turn your poor scores on CWV from red to green. But don’t forget all the other elements that Google (and other search engines) is checking. Make smart and incremental gains, and sustain those gains by focusing on what matters most to search engines, which is about this concern: how do I serve users better?
The hundreds of ranking factors from Google alone can be staggering. So zero in on consumers because everything else emanates from good user experience, including page speed.
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