You often click on a link appearing in the search results, and the web page takes longer than usual.
Or, say, while visiting a web page, you face many pop-ups and irrelevant backlinks hampering your experience.
It is also widespread that the content of a web page gets loaded, but the images keep you waiting due to slow loading speed.
In each of the above cases, most users (perhaps including you) do the most practical thing. They leave the page, return to the search results, and click another link.
However, have you ever thought about why such things happen with specific web pages?
Well, the simple answer is those websites have poor core web vitals, and this article is going to be all about it.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core web vitals are factors that decide the overall user experience.
Google measures a website’s webvitals by collecting field user data from Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) in real-time.
Google then classifies it into either of the three categories; poor, need improvement, and good.
There are following three essential web vitals metrics,
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
This metric measures the loading speed and appearance of the largest elements of a website. These elements can be animations, images, videos, etc. It will be a good practice to ensure loading these elements within 2.5 secs.
First Input Delay (FID)
First input delay measures the website’s responsiveness during the first-time interaction by a user and how fast the website’s browser can offer results to the user. The user should not wait more than 100 ms, otherwise, the bounce rate may increase significantly.
However, Google will replace FID with Interaction to Next Paint (INP) in March, 2024.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
CLS measures the ease of user interaction. It checks whether the web page has elements that keep moving while the page is loading and confuses the user.
Why Are Core Web Vitals Important?
Web core vitals play an important role for your website for the following factors,
- Google has confirmed that page experience will be a ranking factor in their Page Experience Update in May 2020.
- The page experience score will play an essential role in determining the ranking of a website.
- Core web vitals will be the most critical factor in measuring page experience scores.
- Web vitals are essential for websites to offer a smooth and enhanced user experience.
How To Measure Core Web Vitals?
You can measure your website’s Google core web vitals in real-time using PageSpeed Insights, Chrome UX Report, Lighthouse, and Chrome DevTools, or by adding Web Vitals Extensions.
However, the most authentic method to measure your website’s core web vitals is to use Google Search Console.
It provides a core web vitals report that helps you evaluate your website’s web pages.
It shows the web pages that demand attention from the website owner by collecting real-time data from Chrome UX reports.
Though Google search console is helpful, we all know its data limitations.
You can overcome this problem by adding your Google search console account with the RankWatch console to extract its full potential.
You only need to follow a few simple steps,
- Go to the dashboard after logging in to your RankWatch account.
- Click on the ‘Console’ tab.
- Select your Google search console account and profile.
- Add your GSC account to the RankWatch console.
It will be beneficial to check the page uploading speed of your web pages to ensure high LCPs.
RankWatch’s website SEO analysis tool can help you measure the same.
How To Improve Core Web Vitals?
Now as you know the importance of Google core web vitals in ranking your website, the next obvious thing you will be interested in is to improve your web vitals.
Reduce JavaScript (JS) Execution
If the user needs to wait more than 300 ms to get results from your website while using it for the first time, your FID score will be poor.
You can improve your FID score by reducing JavaScript execution time, i.e., the time between browser JS code execution and page.
You need to identify the usage of JS codes using a reliable tool like RankWatch website analyzer.
Once identified, you can reduce JS execution by deferring JavaScripts not in use and deleting duplicate JavaScripts.
Apply Lazy Loading
If your website contains heavy elements like animations, images, videos, etc., implementing lazy loading is a must.
That prevents unnecessary loading of those heavy elements at the time of loading above the fold portion of your web page and helps you achieve a higher LCP score.
Lazy loading allows your website to load the heavy elements the moment the user scrolls down to that part.
Use Optimized And Compressed Images
Images being one of the heavy elements of a website, using optimized and compressed images can significantly make your web pages lighter.
That, in turn, helps to reduce the page uploading time, offer a smooth user experience, and achieve a top-notch LCP score.
If you are worried about the image quality after compressing, you won’t be able to differentiate unless you zoom the image or use the wrong format while saving.
Allocating Dimensions For Images And Embeds
It is essential to allocate the correct dimensions of the images and the embeds in CSS files because it helps you avoid layout shifting issues and achieve a CLS score of less than 0.1 seconds.
Unless you specify the correct size of the images and embeds, the browser cannot understand how much space it should allocate for the element while loading the web page. That makes the user face a layout shift.
It is a good practice to reserve spaces for elements in advance to improve your CLS score and user experience.
Ensure Fast Server Response Time
If it takes long to receive content from the server, the browser automatically delays rendering the same on the screen.
A slow server response time not only affects your website’s SEO but also spoils the user’s experience. That may increase your bounce rate as well.
First, you need to check the current performance of your server by checking the following essential parameters,
- Check how fast the server is hosting your website.
- Check the CDN of your website.
- Check whether the usage of any specific plug-in is slowing the loading speed of your website.
After checking the above parameters, it is time to check the server response time using Time To First Bite (TTFB). That will give you an idea of how long a user needs to wait to receive the first bite of your web page content after clicking.
Additional Tip For Improving Core Web Vitals
In this era of mobile technology, you need to know your website’s performance on a mobile device to rank higher.
Moreover, Google follows mobile-first indexing. It prioritizes the mobile version over the desktop version of your website while ranking your website for search results.
Hence, it is essential to monitor how your website is rendered on mobile devices using RankWatch’s website analyzer.
Once you have checked your website’s mobile rendering, you need to measure the mobile-friendliness of your website using RankWatch mobile-friendly checker tool
Conclusion
Google web vitals play an essential role in ranking your website. Besides, as a website owner, you must ensure your users get a flawless experience that further helps you earn organic traffic.
You must ensure that your web pages offer fast loading speed, smooth interactivity, and visual stability to the users.
If the Chrome user reports show most of your web pages have poor Google core vitals, it will drop your rankings drastically.
Hence, it is essential to measure your web vitals using a reliable tool like RankWatch and take necessary actions to improve them as the tool recommends.