Understanding What Core Web Vitals is All About
Core Web Vitals are a set of specified factors that Google gives value to in the overall user experience of a web page. Core Web Vitals consist of three measurements of page speed and user interaction. These three measurements are largest contentful paint, first input delay and cumulative layout shift.
Simply stated, Core Web Vitals can be described as a subset of factors that will contribute to Google’s “page experience” score. These factors compose Google’s method of evaluating the overall user experience (UX) of your web page. To locate your website’s Core Web Vitals data, view the “enhancements” area of your Google Search Console account.
Gaining a Better Understanding of What Core Web Vitals Is All About
What Makes Core Web Vitals Important?
Core Web Vitals are of significant importance. This is because Google intends to add page experience to the Google official ranking factors. Page experience will consist of a mixture of factors that Google deems valuable for user experience, including the following:
• HTTPS;
• Mobile-friendliness;
• Lack of interstitial pop-ups; and
• “Safe-browsing” (essentially, a lack of malware on your web page).
Core Web Vitals will be an extremely important part of this Google score. Actually, Core Web Vitals is expected to compose the largest percentage of your page experience score. It is true, however, that having a super page experience score will not automatically place you in Google’s number one slot.
In fact, Google has indicated that page experience is one of about 200 ranking factors for sites in SERPs. Google also revealed that website owners have until 2023 to make improvements to their website’s Core Web Vital scores. In addition, notice will be issued six months ahead of their rollout. Yet if you want to improve this score now, there are ways to get started right away.
1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
LCP is the time required for a web page to load from the perspective of a page user. It is the time-lapse from clicking on a link until you can view most of the page content on your screen. You can discover the LCP score of your site pages with the aid of Google PageSpeed Insights.
Steps for Improving Your Website’s LCP
Major steps to perform for improving your website’s LCP include the following:
• Remove all unneeded third-party scripts. They can each slow your page loading time by 34ms.
• Upgrade your current web host. Better hosting will improve page loading times, including LCP.
• Use lazy loading. This sets images to load only if a site user scrolls down your web page. This enables you to attain LCP faster.
• Remove any large page design elements that may be impeding the loading speed of your web page.
2. First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay (FID) technically calculates the length of time required for an action to be complete on a web page. Although the FID is a page speed score, it also calculates the time needed for page users to complete an action on your page. FID is especially significant for a login page or a site registering page.
Ways to Improve Your Website’s FID Scores
You can improve your site’s FID scores by performing the following steps:
• Minimize or defer JavaScript. It is nearly impossible for your site visitors to use interactive elements on your web pages while JavaScript is being loaded by the browser. For this reason, minimizing (or deferring) JS is of major importance for FID.
• Remove non-essential third-party scripts since they can impact FID negatively.
• Make use of a browser cache, which will aid in loading your page content more quickly.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) refers to how visually stable a web page is as it loads. For example, if design elements on your page move about while the page is loading, your site has a high CLS, which is not good. Your page elements should be relatively stable as the page loads.
Ways to Minimize Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Steps for minimizing CLS include the following:
• Use set size dimensions for attributes for media, including videos, images, GIFs, infographics, etc. This will keep the browser from changing the page space for a page design element as the web page loads completely.
• Ensure that ad contents have a reserved space to prevent them from displacing other page content.
• Insert new UI elements below the fold. This will prevent them from moving content down the page and making it more difficult for the page user to locate it.