“Core web vitals” — you’ve probably heard this phrase buzzing in digital marketing. But what are the core web vitals? Picture them as the three pillars supporting your website’s performance.
The trifecta includes page speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Imagine them as your site’s hospitality team, ensuring everything is fast, friendly, and visually pleasing. If they drop the ball, they’re looking at a potential 32% increase in users saying goodbye. Time doesn’t wait for anyone.
But don’t sweat it. We’ve got your back! This article is all set to be your guide, helping you navigate these digital waters.
We’ll show you how to improve core web vitals, ramp up your website’s performance, and how these little tweaks can significantly impact Google’s search rankings.
Keep reading to learn how to build a better, brighter, SEO-enhanced website.
What exactly are core web vitals?
While it’s instantaneous, online pages load in pieces, which means that forms, photos, and headlines appear at different times, and the speed of each element contributes to the overall load time.
Understanding your page performance is critical to appease impatient users and meet the Core Web Vitals standards.
To achieve your goal, you must first learn about the metrics that comprise the Core Web Vitals.
Improving Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) tracks how swiftly the main content of a page loads. Google suggests keeping the LCP under 2.5 seconds for about 75% of page loads to ensure optimal user experience.
Case Study: Enhancing LCP on a News Website
Consider a news website with feature articles accompanied by images.
When a user clicks on a news story, LCP measures the time the main headline or photo loads. The website could optimize the sizes of images, use lazy loading, and enhance server response times to meet the LCP threshold.
This way, the site offers a fast and engaging user experience.
Optimizing First Input Delay (FID)
FID evaluates the responsiveness of your page to user actions.
It’s the time taken from when a user interacts (like clicking a link or button) to when the browser responds. For a positive user experience, Google recommends maintaining an FID under 100 milliseconds for 75% of page loads.
Case Study: Boosting FID on an E-commerce Website
Take an e-commerce website where customers add products to their shopping carts. If a user clicks the “Add to Cart” button, FID measures the time it takes for the site to respond to this action.
The website can minimize third-party scripts, optimize JavaScript execution, and employ asynchronous loading to meet the FID threshold. Such practices result in a smoother shopping experience.
Minimizing Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
CLS gauges the visual stability of your webpage. It scores between zero (indicating no layout shifts) and a positive value (indicating layout shifts).
Unexpected layout shifts often lead to poor user experience, making it crucial to maintain a low CLS. Google recommends a CLS score of 0.1 or less.
Case Study: Reducing CLS on a Blog Website
When an ad loads dynamically, it can cause a layout shift, displacing the text. The website can reduce layout shifts by reserving ad space and using placeholders.
This approach results in a stable, reader-friendly experience, meeting the CLS threshold.
According to Google, when you meet the core vitals, there’s a 24% lesser likelihood of users abandoning page loads. You can find the underpinning research in Google’s article “Establishing the Core Web Vitals metric thresholds.”
How to Improve Core Web Vitals
First and foremost, you require baseline metrics for your site. Follow these procedures to determine your starting point:
Examine your performance. Your URL is labeled “Bad,” “Needs Improvement,” and “Excellent” on both mobile and desktop. Toggle between the two in the page’s upper left corner.
Here’s what it looked like when I did a HubSpot analysis.
The desktop version performs better than the mobile, which is typical.
In a five-million-page study, Backlinko found that the average web page takes 87.84% longer to load on mobile versus desktop — significant factors affected speed: the type of CMS, CDNs and hosting, and page weight.
If your URL doesn’t have enough data for a specific Core Web Vitals metric, you won’t see that metric appear on the report. However, once your URL has enough data, your page status will reflect the metric that performs the worst.
Core Web Vitals to Measure
Besides the three main Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift), there are other metrics you can measure to acquire a more thorough knowledge of your website’s performance and user experience.
While these metrics are not part of the core set defined by Google, they can provide valuable insights. Here are a few additional web vitals to consider.
Time to First Byte (TTFB)
TTFB measures the time a user’s browser takes to receive the first byte of a response from the server after making a request. It reflects the server’s responsiveness and can impact overall page load time.
Time to Interactive (TTI)
Time-to-interactivity (TTI) measures how long it takes for a loaded web page to start responding to the user’s actions. It analyzes the page’s usefulness regarding JavaScript execution, rendering, and resource loading.
Total Blocking Time (TBT)
TBT measures the total time during page load when the main thread is blocked and unable to respond to user input. It accounts for tasks that block the main line, such as long JavaScript execution, and can impact interactivity and responsiveness.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
To gauge how quickly content is loaded, FCP tracks how long it takes for the initial render to complete. It helps calculate consumers’ initial visual impressions.
Time to First Meaningful Paint (TTFMP)
TTFMP measures the time it takes for the first meaningful content to be displayed on the screen, indicating when the user perceives the page as valuable and informative.
While these metrics go beyond the core set of Core Web Vitals, monitoring and optimizing them can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of your website’s performance and help provide a better user experience.
