Core Web Vitals: SEO – Are Core Web Vitals Important?

If you are not a part of the IT department at your company, or do not come from a web development background, you may not ever think to try and understand jargon like; “performance metrics”, “visual stability” or “ranking signals”. Although these terms and insights partner well with digital marketing strategies, they are known as Core Web Vitals. Core Web Vitals are a specific set of factors that Google determines to be important in a webpage’s UX and overall performance.

But, just how important are core web vitals in terms of SEO and search engine ranking factors? You may be spending a large percentage of your marketing budget on Search Engine Optimisation and SEM development without seeing any results in ranking. The reason behind this could be that, although you are creating great quality content for your website, you may not be paying attention to core web vitals and the technical performance of your website.

Core Web Vitals: SEO

As well as impacting user experience on your site, Core Web Vitals will have an impact on where you end up being ranked within search engine results. This article will break down what core web vitals are and how you can utilise them to boost your search engine result ranking.

Why are Core Web Vitals (SEO) important?

As previously mentioned, the factors measured within core web vitals metrics on both mobile and desktop will have an impact on the ranking of your web pages on search engines. Furthermore, these factors also affect the user experience for those visiting your webpage in the first place.

Last year, Google announced that there would be an update to their algorithm with page experience becoming a major factor in indexing pages. They confirmed that core web vitals will become ranking metrics by May/ mid-June 2021, and the impacts of this are already being felt by website owners and marketeers globally.

No one wants to spend time on an outdated webpage with excessively long load times and an unclear, constantly shifting layout. We want our experiences surfing the web to be quick, clean, and optimised. This is what these core web vitals metrics help to do and why Google has introduced core web vitals seo metrics.

It’s clear to note that, although these factors will paly a role in the overall ranking of web pages, it won’t magically shoot your webpage up to number 1 on Google. It’s vital (pun intended) that you also focus on optimising your SEO content within all web pages and articles. Good quality website content alongside a technically optimised website is a sure way to guarantee a great experience for those interacting with the page, as well as increasing the chances of your webpages being found easily on search engines.

Here at Bark Street Digital, we have SEO specialists that can help produce the needed content for your webpage as well as optimising your site for core web vitals. Keep reading to find out more and contact us if you have any enquiries.

What are the Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are broken down into 6 main areas, with largest contentful paint (LCP), first input delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) being 3 of the most important.

Google uses real world, field data when indexing pages. Using the PageSpeed Insights tool will enable you to view your overall core web vitals score and provides a breakdown of page speed scores, FID scores and CLS scores. If any issues are detected on your website, they will be shown within this tool. Google search console can also be used to detect any core web vitals SEO issues.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This measures the loading performance- how long it takes for most of the content on a page to load from the perspective of the user. To provide a good user experience, Google determines that LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.

Some ways to improve your LCP score are:

–         Removing large page elements

–         Lazy Load – Lazy loads means that page elements like images or videos only load if users scroll down to where they are.

–         Remove any third-party scripts

–         Upgrade your webhost

 

First Input Delay (FID)

This measures interactivity ­– how long it takes for users to be interact with your webpage. To provide a better user experience, pages should have an FID of 100 milliseconds or below. FID technically measures how long it takes further and measures the time it takes for users to do something on your page.

Some examples of interactions include:

– Selecting a link on the navigation bar

– Searching through the website

– Choosing an option from a menu.

– user input contact information into a field

Ways to improve FID are:

  • Remove any non-critical third-party scripts
  • Minimize (or defer) JavaScript
  • Use a browser cache

 

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

This measures visual stability – how stable your page elements are as the page loads on a user’s browser. To provide a good user experience, pages should maintain a CLS of 0.1 or below. The lower the CLS value, the better optimised experience for users.

Some ways to improve CLS are:

– Use set size attribute dimensions for any media (video, images, GIFs, infographics etc.): 

– Make sure ads elements have a reserved space

– Add new UI elements below the fold

 

How can Bark Street Digital Assist with Core Web Vitals SEO?

Core Web Vitals SEO are an important factor to consider when trying to improve your webpage ranking. However, there is a lot of jargon and technical details that may be confusing to comprehend. Luckily, the process does not need to be done alone.

Bark Street Digital are a team of web development and SEO experts who can assist you in improving your core web vitals score, as well as boosting your rankings on search engines.

If you would like to improve your core web vitals as well as your SEO so that you can rank higher today, please get in touch by calling 01204 263028 or by completing our Contact Us form.

You can find out more about the services we offer at Bark Street Digital by checking out the Our Services page.

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