What are Core Web Vitals? 7 Ways to Optimize Your Website

Google said in May 2020 that a new ranking criteria relating to overall page experience (how quickly pages load, mobile-friendliness, etc…) would be released. A set of indicators known as Core Web Vitals is included in the existing page experience rating signals.

Core Web Vitals’ major purpose is to ensure that websites provide a positive user experience. It isn’t anything new.

This is something we should be doing all of the time (and have been doing). When someone visits a page on your website, you want them to have a positive experience.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Google considers Core Web Vitals to be a set of particular elements that contribute to a webpage’s overall user experience. Three specific page performance and user interaction statistics make up Core Web Vitals: greatest contentful paint, initial input delay, and cumulative layout shift.

In a short, Core Web Vitals are a subset of characteristics that will be included in Google’s “page experience” score (essentially, Google’s approach of assessing the overall UX of your website).

Google has revealed the several factors that go into deciding a page’s overall experience. These are the following:

Core Web Vitals: A mix of three essential performance indicators that assess the visual loading, interaction, and visual stability of a page as it loads for users – Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift.

Mobile-Friendliness: Examines how easy it is to use and navigate websites on mobile devices, including content readability and the clickability and accessibility of links and on-page components.

Safe Browsing: Checks for malware, phishing, and compromised content on a website to guarantee that users may browse safely.

HTTPS: Determines whether or not a website’s connection is secure and whether or not the site is served via HTTPS, as recommended.

Non-Intrusive Interstitials: Ensures that visitors’ access to critical on-page material is not hindered while they browse.

The Core Web Vitals data for your site may be seen in the “enhancements” area of your Google Search Console account.

Loading, interaction, and metrics are among the Core Web Vitals.

They are metrics that measure the user experience, such as:

1. What is the average time it takes for a page to load?
2. Is it possible for the content on a page to change unexpectedly?
3. Does the page’s main content load first?
4. Are there any annoying popups?

They’re part of a larger set of page experience metrics, which also includes:

1. Mobile-friendliness
2. Instead of Http, use Https for security.
3. Pop-ups that are intrusive
4. Browse with confidence.

What factors affect Core Web Vitals?

The three metrics that make up Core Web Vitals are the Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumalitive Shift Layout. Let’s go over each measure, how it affects the others, and how to improve Core Web Vitals.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): The time it takes for a page’s main content to load and appear on the screen. In other words, how quickly the page loads. Render time, huge graphics, background video, and text in the viewport all have an impact (the visible part of the webpage to the visitor).

First Input Delay (FID): After landing on a page, this metric measures how quickly people can engage with it. JavaScript, third-party code, tracking scripts, and other factors influence this.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures how frequently customers are irritated by sudden layout changes (also known as the “annoyance” metric). Does the page’s content (buttons, CTAs, etc.) move in an unexpected way? Image size, motion, and various fonts are generally factors.

7 Tips to improve your Core Web Vitals

You should run a brief test of website performance analysis to see how well your website operates in terms of key web vitals. You can do this with Google tools like Search Console and Page Speed Insights, as well as alternative tools like GTmetrix.

It’s worth comparing data and upgrading your page more efficiently if you do performance reports with multiple tools.

1- Optimize and Compress Images

Don’t you believe it’s self-evident? Images, on the other hand, are the most important features on many websites. As a result, optimising them is critical because it can make your page substantially lighter, boosting loading time, LCP score, UX, and search engine ranks.

By compressing photos with tiny jpg and increasing your LCP performance, you may minimise the entire page size. You might believe that image compression reduces image quality or reduces resolution. Actually, the difference is only visible when you zoom in or if the image is stored in the incorrect format. Always try to save landscape photographs in jpg format and graphics in png format. Next-generation formats like as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP can also be used, however we recommend conducting some research first.

Aside from compressing, it’s also critical to turn on the Content Delivery Network (CDN) for images. A content delivery network (CDN) is a global network of servers that caches your material. Because servers are spread across the globe, photos can be served faster from the server nearest to the users.

2- Videos

Use a third-party video hosting service like Vimeo, Wistia, or YouTube to serve videos to your visitors instead of putting big video files directly onto your website. This will save traffic on your server while also providing the best video quality for the visitor’s surroundings. By postponing rendering of videos until they are clicked, some of the video loading can be deferred from the initial page load.

3- Reduce JavaScript Execution

If your FID score is low, it suggests your page interacts with users for more than 300 milliseconds. You should think about optimising and minimising your JS execution. This reduces the time it takes for your browser to execute JS code and display the page.

It’s also critical to consume as little memory as possible. Why? When your site’s code sends a request to the browser, it creates a new memory block, which disables JavaScript and may cause the page to load slowly.

Deferring unused JS, according to Google, is one approach to reduce the execution time.

4- Tracking Scripts

Third-party tracking scripts that aren’t relevant to your business or marketing should be avoided. Examine the scripts on your website. Review all of the tags in Google Tag Manager, then ask yourself the following questions:

• Do they have to be on every page? If not, only use them on the pages that need them.
• What’s the trade-off between these tags and page speed? Remove any tracking scripts that aren’t needed.
• Do you really need them? If not, put money aside to get rid of them.

5- Implement Lazy Loading

If you use photos on your site, it’s critical to use lazy loading to protect your site’s UX and core web vitals score. Lazy loading allows you to load images at the precise moment when viewers scroll down the page, preserving the website’s loading speed and ensuring a top-notch LCP score.

Other advantages of sluggish loading include:

• The performance of your website will be enhanced.
• It will set a limit on how much bandwidth can be used.
• It can help your site’s search engine optimization.
• It will keep visitors on the website longer and lower the bounce rate.

6- Fonts

On your website, we recommend employing no more than 8 unique font variants in total. This comprises the font’s families, weights, and italic variations.

The browser will be instructed to load the font assets required for this page instantly if they are preloaded. The amount of HTTP requests and DNS lookups will be reduced by storing your fonts locally.

7- Ads, Pop-ups, promo banners

Any layout modification that occurs without user involvement will result in an unanticipated layout shift. This will result in a low CLS score and, more significantly, anger the visitor.

The solution is to pre-determine the height and width of the ad or banner area so that the page layout does not move when the ad loads. Avoid putting advertising over other material so that after the page is fully loaded, all of the information isn’t pushed down.

Why is Page Speed Important?

The importance of page speed is that it reduces the annoyance of waiting for websites to load. It improves user engagement (how people interact with your website) and conversions by providing a better user experience (sales and leads).

Take a look at Google’s research. The likelihood of someone staying on your website decreases as page load times increase.

Learn more about Page Speed Test, you can read this article ‘A TECHNICAL GUIDE TO GOOGLE’S PAGE SPEED INSIGHTS REPORTS‘

What is the appropriate Page Speed?

Don’t get too caught up in the page speed results.

Yes, there are things you can do to optimise your site to increase these ratings, but Google has stated that there isn’t a standard number to aim for.

We also have detailed article on ‘Google Search Console and its Popular Features‘

Conclusion

You may aid to improve your site’s page experience signals by following these guidelines and incorporating page experience optimization into your SEO strategy.

This will have a favourable impact in the short and long run.

Enhancing page experience will not only assist to future-proof your website’s performance by putting it in the best possible position to capitalise on the next algorithm update, but it will also assure great experiences for users now.

It’s not about satisfying certain criteria for search engines when it comes to page experience optimization.

It’s all about giving genuine people the finest possible experiences.