In 2021, Google confirmed that Core Web Vitals became a part of its page experience signals, which are used to rank web pages in search results. While content relevance, backlinks, and other traditional SEO factors still play a significant role, page experience now carries additional weight. This means that pages with poor Core Web Vitals scores will likely see a drop in their search engine rankings, while websites with excellent user experience metrics could see a boost.
By optimizing Core Web Vitals, you’re not only improving the user experience on your site but also ensuring your pages meet Google’s expectations, which can improve your site’s chances of ranking well in search results. The report provides insights into the pages that need improvement and the number of users affected, making it easier to prioritize optimizations. In the Core Web Vitals report within Search Console, you can see how your website performs across these metrics in both mobile and desktop versions.
Lighthouse is an open-source tool that audits web pages for performance and provides detailed reports on metrics such as Core Web Vitals. You can access Lighthouse through Chrome DevTools or as a standalone tool. This browser extension allows you to quickly measure Core Web Vitals for any page as you browse. It’s helpful for monitoring the real-time performance of your website.
Choose a reliable hosting provider, or consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up page delivery, especially for global audiences.
Compress large images without sacrificing quality. Use modern formats like WebP, which provide high-quality images at smaller file sizes.
Improving your Core Web Vitals is key to providing an optimal user experience and boosting your SEO performance.
Load images and videos only when they enter the viewport (visible area) as users scroll down the page, which can reduce initial load times.
Use the <link rel=”preload”> tag to prioritize loading critical resources, like fonts, that are necessary for rendering the page quickly.
Too much JavaScript can delay the page’s ability to respond to user input. Remove unused JavaScript, defer non-essential scripts, and ensure that essential scripts load asynchronously. Optimize how events (like clicks or keystrokes) are handled by reducing the time taken to process them.
Offload non-urgent tasks to a Web Worker, which runs in the background and allows the main thread to remain free for user interactions. Always specify dimensions (width and height) for images and videos to prevent layout shifts as these elements load.
Core Web Vitals are essential to providing a great user experience and improving your website’s search performance. By focusing on optimizing LCP, FID, and CLS, you’ll not only make your site faster and more stable for users but also improve your chances of ranking higher in Google search results.