Core Web Vitals: What are they and how can you improve them?
The Google Core Web Vitals are vital if you want to make your SEO strategy work. In this blog, you will find out what it is, and how it can improve your website's performance. Become even more visible within various search engines!
What are Core Web Vitals?
In 2020, Google came with a set of guidelines that a "healthy" website must meet for a good user experience. These include the loading speed, response time, and the website stability. Google sees the Core Web Vitals as an essential indicator of the quality of a website and assesses the user experience based on this.
Google's rationale is that when a website performs well, the user will be active on the website longer. It is considered very important that the visitor has a good experience on a site. This is why the Core Web Vitals are included in the evaluation of a website.
Why are the Google Core Web Vitals crucial for your SEO strategy?
So, Google has added criteria for the website visitor's user experience. With this, the Core Web Vitals have become very important if you want to rank well in search results. The better the page experience the better your website will rank higher in the search engine.
Page experience refers to aspects that measure how the user experiences the website. The information value of the page itself is not included in the Core Web Vitals because it is not about the relevance of the content on a page. For example, you have good content but an image takes a very long time to load, it can cause frustration for
the visitor, who will leave the website as a result.
Mapping the Core Web Vitals score
So for the Core Web Vitals, it is very important that the user has a good page experience. Step one in this process is focused on mapping where optimizations may be needed. The Core Web Vitals score is calculated based on three components:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) - Measures the loading speed of the largest element located on the page.
- First Input Delay (FID) - Measures the response time of a website after a particular action is performed, such as a click.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) - Measures the stability of your website. For example, are there many shifts during page loading?
Core Web Vitals assessment tools
There are several tools you can use to find out how your website scores and where any bottlenecks are. We will highlight a few tools for you.
Pagespeed Insights
Thanks to Pagespeed Insights, you can see how the three different aspects of the Core Web Vitals are performing on both mobile and desktop. It also provides suggestions on how to improve your website.
Search Console
In Search Console, for mobile and desktop, you can view your actual user data under the Site-Vitality tab to find out how your pages are performing. Again, CLS, FID, and LCP are taken into account.
Lighthouse
Lighthouse comes with detailed information about the Core Web Vitals of your website. In addition, Lighthouse can audit your entire website and evaluate other factors, such as accessibility and how well your SEO is set up.
How can you improve your Core Web Vitals score?
Thanks to the tools, you can find out where improvement is needed. In addition, the above tools also indicate what is needed to optimize your website. This is different for each website. Common solutions are:
- Minimize unnecessary external scripts in the code
- Minimize and optimize Javascript and CSS codes
- Try to ensure that the number of loaded files is not too large
- Reduce images and use 'set size' for these media elements
Need help?
Not quite there yet? GMU can assist you with your SEO strategy including a detailed look at the Core Web Vitals. Feel free to contact us to discuss your options.