Understanding Core Web Vitals

We have been working and progressing to work on Core Web Vitals as a priority. In terms to prepare for Page Experience Update.

During this process, we figured out many other aspects that can help improve user experience on the page, reducing unwanted JS and optimize the code. Which is the end result & goal of the whole Web Vital.

On a side note, it could be a strategy for you to move away from relying on AMP for page speed and performance as it has tons of restrictions. So, if we could optimize our content well, in terms of Visual stability & page speed (LCP etc.) there will be no need for AMP altogether to serve these purposes.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core web vitals are factors that measure the user experience score of all indexable web pages of your website.

Core Web Vitals are a collection of three such factors:

1. Largest contentful paint
2. First input delay
3. Cumulative layout shift

Fix poor user experience on your website using Google's CWV reports

Top Core Web Vital Metrics in Search Console

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.
2. First Input Delay (FID): Measures interactivity. To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, sites should strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1.
4. Mobile-Friendly: The page is mobile-friendly. Check if your page is mobile-friendly with the Mobile-Friendly Test.
5. Safe browsing: The page doesn’t contain malicious (for example, malware) or deceptive (for example, social engineering) content. Check to see if your site has any safe-browsing issues with the Security Issues report.
6. HTTPS: The page is served over HTTPS. Check if your site’s connection is secure. If the page isn’t served over HTTPS, learn how to secure your site with HTTPS.
7. No intrusive interstitials: The content on the page is easily accessible to the user. Learn how interstitials can make content less accessible.
8. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This is a new metric that basically looks at if the page is stable when it loads (i.e., do images, content, buttons move around the page as the page loads or does the page stay put and solid). In short, is the layout of the page shifting, resulting in a poor user experience.

Importance of Core Web Vitals

Get ready for Core Web Vitals in Google as they will become ranking signals by sometime this May. This is most likely going to be a part of the update that combines the existing UX signals.

Google's way of looking at websites in their own determined user experience standards.

We all know of the existing ones which include Mobile-Friendliness, HTTPS, Intrusiveness and security.

However, this may change your rankings but not what you may be thinking. It is because you will not be penalized, but rather Google will give you an additional signal boost based on additional three benchmarks.

3 Benchmarks are being stated on top of already existing ones in order to qualify for the ranking signal boost.

• Speed - How fast your webpage loads data. Speed of loading should be 2.5 seconds or less.
• Interaction - How soon someone can actually interact with the page - Users must be able to interact with the page within 100 milliseconds of landing on the page which is 1/10th of a second.
• Layout - How much the layout jumps around. In layman terms, webpages should not be jumping around at all. This could mean turning off the announcement banners on top or turning off ad-blocker notices, pop-ups etc.

As for measuring these benchmarks, Google has several ways to get it done. They kind of report your results like a traffic signal. Red, Yellow, or Green where you want to ensure that you are in the Green for all three benchmarks which signal that you are qualified.

Conclusion,

This does not necessarily mean that you will lose rankings. It just means that you will not be given the boost signals. But one thing you do need to note is that if your competitors are qualified and you are not, well then you may lose rankings. I hope this article was informative and helpful and gives you an insight to core web vitals. If you have any trouble optimizing your website for a better core web vital score then get professional support by Miami solution SEO for best performance results.