SEARCHENGINES

What are Core Web Vitals and Why You Should Care?

Published

2 years ago

October 21, 2021

what-are-core-web-vitals-and-why-you-should-care?

When it comes to optimizing your website, you do so for various reasons. It’s important that your site is set up to generate leads, optimized for SEO, encourages more email subscribers so you can grow your email list, and that it provides an optimal user experience.

You may not have heard of it before, but Core Web Vitals are especially important for increasing the experience of your users. Let’s dive into what Core Web Vitals are and what you can do to make sure your website has good Core Web Vitals.

What are Core Web Vitals

Web Vitals is an initiative by Google on how to provide a great user experience (UX) for the web. Core Web Vitals, a subset of Web Vitals, helps you to judge your website’s UX against a distinct set of UX metrics.

Google intends to evolve Core Web Vitals over time. However, as of 2021, the current set of Core Web Vitals focuses on the following three areas of UX: loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

These three areas are measured as Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Why Core Web Vitals Are Important

In May 2020, Google announced that Core Web Vitals would be incorporated into Google’s Search Ranking Signals. What that means is your website’s Core Web Vitals will influence how well your website ranks in Google Search, along with many other ranking factors.

Google began introducing Core Web Vitals to Google Search in June 2021 and is scheduled to be completed by the end of August 2021.

Since 2015, Google has been increasing the importance of good website UX as a Search Ranking Signal. This puts more emphasis on website owners to ensure their website UX is excellent if they want to be rewarded with good Google search rankings.

How Can I Tell if My Website Has Good Web Vitals

Unlike most of the other Search Ranking Signals, Google has made it easy to know if your website has good or bad Core Web Vitals.

To get a quick overview of your website’s Core Web Vitals, you can use either Google PageSpeed or Google Lighthouse.

For a fast and simplified overview of your website’s Core Web Vitals, enter your website URL into Google PageSpeed and hit the Analyze button.

To check your website’s Core Web Vitals as well as other user-experience metrics, you can run a Google Lighthouse audit from within Chrome DevTools.

Although there are other ways to check your website’s Core Web Vitals, these two tools use field data wherever possible as opposed to lab data. Field data means data collected from real-life users that have visited your website in the past. Lab data means simulated data based on averages collected from other websites.

Google recommends using field data over lab data when testing a live website’s vitals as field data is more closer to what an actual website user would experience in the real world.

What Can I Do to Make Sure my Website has Good Web Vitals?

Ensuring your website is golden when it comes to Good Web Vitals isn’t necessarily a quick SEO tactic you can implement in just 15 minutes. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.

Fortunately, Google has outlined what metrics you should aim for if you want to have good Core Web Vitals. They are as follows:

Largest Contentful Paint: within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.
First Input Delay: 100 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift: 0.1. or less.

If your website’s Core Web Vitals are not within the thresholds outlined above, the next section will tell you how you can improve them.

Improving Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The time it takes for a browser to receive content from your server can have an adverse effect on how quickly your website appears on the screen. A faster server response time improves page-load metrics, including LCP and time to first byte (TTFB). You can improve your TTFB by:

Cleaning up your server and ensuring it has enough resources
Implementing a content delivery network (CDN)
Ensuring all static website files such as CSS and JavaScript are cached
Making sure HTML pages are served cache-first
Establishing third-party connections early
Using signed exchanges (SXGs) wherever possible

Unoptimized WordPress websites are notorious for having poor LCP/TTFB metrics. That’s why investing in a high-performance WordPress hosting server is important if you want to achieve the best Core Web Vitals scores.

Another area that can drastically improve your LCP is optimizing the way your website loads static JavaScript and CSS files. Here are a few ways you can optimize your website CSS and JS file handling:

Reduce/remove render-blocking JS and CSS
Compress and minify JS and CSS
Defer non-critical JS and CSS while making critical JS and CSS inline

Aside from CSS and JavaScript, your website assets (images, videos, and fonts, etc.) could be hurting your LCP. Here are a few ways to minimize the impact your website assets has on your LCP:

Remove unnecessary images
Optimize and compress all images
Use modern image formats such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, or WebP
Lazy-load website assets and consider using an image CDN
Preload any custom web fonts and use the WOFF2 format
Ensure GZIP is enabled on your web server or CDN

Improving First Input Delay (FID)

FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with your web page to the point where they can actually respond. A real-life human interaction would be necessary in order to measure this response delay. That means lab tests will not work to simulate FID. If you are unable to test your website with field data, total blocking time (TFT) can be used as a fallback metric. Here are a few ways to improve your website FID and TFT metrics:

Remove or reduce unnecessary JavaScript
Break up long tasks into smaller asynchronous tasks
Optimize your web page for interaction readiness
Reduce reliance on cascading fetches and third-party JavaScripts
Consider on-demand loading for critical third-party JavaScript
Use a web worker for non-UI operations
Reduce JavaScript execution time by deferring unused JS
Minimize unused polyfills

Improving Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Have you ever gone to click a website button only for it to shift its position when the page finally loads? That’s an example of a website with poor CLS. The CLS metric measures how unstable your website layout is by summing up layout shifts that happen without user input. It also looks at how much visible content has shifted in view as well as the distance it shifted by. If your website has poor CLS, here are a few ways to improve it:

Always include width and height size attributes on your website images and videos
If your website has banner ads, statically reserve a space for the ad slots
Avoid placing non-sticky ads at the top of the viewport
Use a placeholder or fallback to reserve the space for iframes and embeds
Avoid pop-ups that shift the layout of your web pages when they are still loading
Avoid using animations that shift your website layout
Use the CSS transform attribute over attributes that can cause layout shifts such as box-shadow and box-sizing

Wrapping Up

Website optimization is crucial for success. Your site plays a key role in growing your email list and getting you new leads to engage with. It needs to be built successfully so it leaves an impression and delights your users.

Improving your Core Web Vitals will not only help improve your user experience but also your website’s ability to rank well in Google search.

Author:
James, Founder of jamesbanks.co, teaches entrepreneurs how to start and scale online businesses with search engine marketing. His content stems from growing over a thousand businesses over the last decade as a digital marketing consultant and agency co-owner.

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SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024

Published

2 hours ago

April 19, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google Ads notified advertisers that some ad customizers will stop working soon. Google discontinued the limited use video carousel markup. Google Maps has new directions and travel features, plus a bunch of new EV features. Google Notes on Search might not end in May 2024 despite what people suggest. Google Business Profiles asked businesses to register their defibrillators, their AEDs.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Notes On Search Won’t Necessarily Go Away In May

There have been some people noticing that the Google Notes On Search labs experiment has an end date of May 2024 and thus they are expecting Notes on Search to be turned off by then. Just because it has that end date listed, it does not mean the labs experiment will end on that date.

Google Maps Releases New Directions, Travel & EV Features

Google has announced a number of new travel features with Google Maps and Travel around driving alternatives, trains and buses, travel impact mode and then some new EV driving direction features. Google says these features are to give you more “sustainable choices.”

Google Ads Reminds Advertisers Some Ad Customizers Will Go Away May 31st

On August 31, 2021, Google notified advertisers it would drop support for expanded text ads for responsive search ads. Google is now reminding advertisers that Ad customizers for text ads, expanded text ads and Dynamic Search Ads will stop serving after May 31, 2024.

Google Drops Video Carousel Markup

Google has discontinued its support for video carousel markup and has thus removed it from its video structured data help documentation. Initially, Google tested video carousel on a limited number of sites and is now saying that it “ultimately found that it wasn’t useful for the ecosystem at scale.”

Google Business Profiles Register Your Defibrillator (AED)

Google sent out emails a couple of days ago to businesses asking them to register their Automated External Defibrillator (AED) with Google Business Profiles. Google said, “you could save lives” if you do it.

Google NYC Earthquake Reaction Video

A couple of weeks ago we had an earthquake in the New York region and I finally found a video from the Google NYC office of the reaction of some Googlers while the earthquake happened. These Googlers were recording a video and felt it but were unsure if that was a real earthquake.

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

Have feedback on this daily recap; let me know on Twitter @rustybrick or @seroundtable, on Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky and you can follow us on Facebook and on Google News and make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or just contact us the old fashion way.

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

The Google March core update still is causing volatility and it is deepening. Google may make changes to the crawl stats report in Search Console. Google Search Console now shows unused ownership tokens. Google Maps will drop the review drafts. Google Add added generative AI for image generate for Demand Gen campaigns. Google Search is testing more sitelinks designs.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Deepening Google Core Ranking Volatility Hits Yesterday & Today

I know we just reported on more volatility this Monday, possibly related to the Google March 2024 core update, but we are seeing even more volatility over the past 24 hours related to this update. This volatility shows deepening movement for those who were hit, which is incredibly sad in many cases.

Google Search Console Adds Unused Ownership Tokens

Google Search Console has a new security feature under user and permission management to help you manage your unused ownership tokens. Basically, it helps you manage who has permissions to your Search Console profiles and who should not, maybe some legacy verifications.

Google: Should We Explain The Crawl Stats Report in Search Console

Martin Splitt from Google posted a one-line question asking, “Should we do something to explain the crawl stats report in GSC?” This was posted on Mastodon, which has a small audience, but the responses were pretty good.

New Google Ads AI Generated Image Tool For Demand Gen Campaigns

Google Ads announced that Demand Gen campaigns are getting generative AI tools to create image assets. This is rolling out to advertisers around the world in English with more languages to come later this year, Google said.

Google Tests Horizontal Lines For Sitelinks & People Also Ask

Google Search is testing horizontal lines under the sitelinks and the people also ask elements in the search results. This is a long horizontal line that goes across the while search result snippet.

Google Maps No Longer Will Support Draft Reviews

Google Maps will soon stop supporting drafting reviews for local business listings and Google Business Profiles. Google said that starting July 16, 2024, review drafts will no longer be supported.

Doogler In Google Play Area

Some of you love photos of dogs, so here is another one of a Doogler, a Google dog, in a play area, at the Google office. This was shared by the Life at Google Twitter account.

Other Great Search Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Feedback:

SEARCHENGINES

Daily Search Forum Recap: April 16, 2024

Published

2 days ago

April 17, 2024

Entireweb News Bot

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google will fight the site reputation abuse spam both algorithmically and with manual actions. Google is testing thumbs-up and down in product carousels. Google Ads similar product carousel is being tested. Google Search updated its image documentation. Google AdSense has a new ad format named ad intents.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Google Will Fight Site Reputation Abuse Spam Both With Manual Actions & Algorithms

Google’s new spam algorithm update also introduced new spam policies including the upcoming site reputation abuse policy that won’t go into effect until May 2024. Google has confirmed it will fight site reputation abuse spam using both manual actions (humans) and algorithms (machines).

Google Search Tests Thumbs Up/Down Buttons In Product Grid Results

Google launched the style recommendations with thumbs up and down buttons not long ago after testing it in January. Now Google is showing this thumbs up and down buttons in the product grid search results, so Google can see what you like or dislike and then show you more products that you do like.

Google Ads “Similar Product” Carousel

Google has a similar products section and carousel for Google Ads sponsored listings. We have seen similar products and similar shopping related results from the organic / free listings but now I am seeing examples of a search ad carousel for “similar products.”

Clarification: Google Search Supports Images Referenced From src Attribute

Google has clarified in its image search help documentation that images are only extracted from the src attribute of img tags in Google Search. This is not new, but Google decided to update its documentation based on some questions it received about the topic.

Google AdSense New Ad Intents Formats – Links & Anchors In Content

Google AdSense announced a new auto ads format named “Ad intents.” Ad intents places links and anchors showing organic search results with ads into existing text and pages on your site related to your content. Yea, it takes your content, and hyperlinks it to the Google search results.

3-Wheel Tricycle At Google

Google’s Ann Arbor office has this 3-wheel tricycle that some Googlers have used over the years to get around the office. This one looks like the hot pink Huffy brand. I spotted this recently on Instagram but the photo is from 2016.