Quality content will always reign supreme — any digital marketer would tell you that it’s the most effective way to attract and convert your target audience. But while content provides the answers that your audience is looking for, there’s another element that determines your digital marketing success.
Google added Core Web Vitals as a search ranking factor in May 2021. It joined this existing list of search signals: mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
What does that mean for your existing SEO strategy?
Core Web Vitals don’t have a direct effect on the way you create and optimize content. To increase leads and conversions, however, you would need to put greater significance on the technical side of SEO.
You need to improve those Core Web Vitals so you can rank higher on SERPs and be more visible online.
Our digital marketing agency in Lake Mary, FL is your support system in the industry. Let us walk you through Core Web Vitals and how you can most effectively improve these metrics based on Google’s latest algorithm update.
What are Core Web Vitals?
To put it simply, Core Web Vitals determine how good the user experience is when visitors land on your website. But there’s more to these metrics than building a responsible and mobile-friendly site. It highlights the importance of loading time, interactivity, and visual stability.
Largest Contentful Paint (Loading)
Top-performing sites should have a maximum loading time of 2.5 seconds for header images, videos, and content. Otherwise, loading delays could result in a higher bounce rate.
First Input Delay (Interactivity)
A well-optimized website responds to user interaction in the blink of an eye — that’s less than 100 milliseconds. Make sure all links and forms are working to keep visitors engaged.
Cumulative Layout Shift (Visual Stability)
Google gives websites higher search rankings if the images and buttons remain stable while you scroll the website. It’s time for a fix if the layout gets rearranged every time you scroll.
These page experience metrics ensure the best user experience and, consequently, improves your search rankings. You can check how your website is performing through Google Search Console.
Google Search Console has a Core Web Vitals tab on the menu. When you click on it, you get redirected to a page that shows your website’s standing based on mobile and desktop metrics. Take note of which web pages are “good” and pay more attention to pages that “need improvement” or that are “poor.”
What changes can you make to improve Core Web Vitals?
When Google Search announced that it will launch an optimized set of page experience ranking signals, it emphasized the addition of Core Web Vitals to previous UX-related signals.
Keeping in mind that Core Web Vitals measure website usability through loading time, interactivity, and visual stability, here are the simplest ways to improve the user-centric metrics:
- Compressing images to a maximum of 500kb
- Limit the amount of information above the fold
- Review and limit third-party codes and plug-ins
- Leave ample space for videos, images, and text blocks
- Limit the number and quality of animations on each page
These are proven ways to shorten loading time and improve the visual stability of your website.
Because Core Web Vitals are on the technical side of SEO, however, there are slightly more complex ways to ensure the best user experience on your website.
Let’s break them down based on each Core Web Vitals metric.
Largest Contentful Paint (Loading)
You can easily improve the loading time by only keeping the most critical information on each web page’s above-the-fold section. If it isn’t critical in solving a visitor’s concerns or answering their inquiries, you can simply move the information or visual content further down the page.
First Input Delay (Interactivity)
You can easily optimize interactivity by focusing on the most common issues related to it. Here’s how you can improve the responsiveness of your web page:
- Reduce third-party codes. When different processes are simultaneously loading, it takes a longer time for the entire page to load or to become responsive.
- Reduce JavaScript execution time by limiting the codes you’re sending out to users. Send only the codes that users need; remove all unnecessary codes.
- Let the main thread do most of the work. Complexities in web page layout and style inevitably cause delays when visitors try to click on links or fill out forms.
It also helps to be mindful of transfer sizes. Avoid transferring huge files to prevent page delays.
Cumulative Layout Shift (Visual Stability)
Pay attention to the frequency of unexpected layout changes while scrolling a page.
Improve visual stability by limiting the size attributes of all images, animations, and videos you add to a web page. Your web design and development team should leave enough space for every piece of text and visual content that appears on your website.
These techniques limit page shifts while a visitor scrolls the page.
Implement these changes and your website will remain aligned with Google’s latest algorithm updates. As a result, your search ranking increases and you become more visible to the target audience.
Why is it necessary to optimize Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals affect your content strategy and web development now that it’s one of Google’s page experience metrics. You also have to incorporate these metrics into your organic SEO strategy so you can increase website traffic, improve site performance, and get ahead of your competitors.
But these changes don’t just affect your processes. They affect user experience, too.
In fact, Google combined Core Web Vitals and other UX-centric metrics primarily to help users filter the most relevant search results.
These metrics are currently the most reliable signals to measure how good the user experience is for visitors. These signals will evolve over time. But for now, it’s best for you to monitor and improve your website based on these signals so you can attract and convert more visitors.
Tonic Enterprises is eager to help you optimize Core Web Vitals and adjust to Google algorithm changes. Schedule a phone consultation today.