In 2020, Google made an important announcement regarding positioning factors: it would be adding a ranking of web page experience, the so-called Core Web Vitals.
User experience will always be a factor in any marketing strategy. This announcement means it can be measured to make websites more effective.
We already know that making a site easier for users to navigate, and faster to load, is key to its positioning on search engines. It is also vital for increasing sales. It follows that ignoring the Core Web Vitals which Google provides would be a very serious mistake.
Core Web Vitals are a system of metrics that allow us to measure data on user experience (UX), and identify what needs to be done to meet the demands imposed by the Google algorithm, and make our website more effective.
Core Web Vitals can be viewed as a Google extension and combined with other types of tools, such as Google Search Console. To understand this metrics system, let’s look at three very specific indicators which Google uses to evaluate user experience:
his indicator measures the time it takes for a site to load, and the time that elapses until the main content is displayed.
This time is measured in seconds. Recommended load time is less than 2.5 seconds; Google’s ratings are as follows:
- Good: less than 2.5 seconds.
- Requires upgrade: up to 4 seconds.
- Poor: over 4 seconds.
Why does a website rank poorly in LCP? This may be due to the response time of a slow server, a delay in loading resources, such as videos or images, or different blocks of the process in JavaScript and CSS.
Replacing the previous metric FID (First Input Delay), the INP mesures the velocity of page updating when the users inteteracts with it by their whole experience on the website.
On the othe hand, FID was reponsible to analyse the velocity of a page only in the first interaction of the user with the website. According to Google’s datas people spend more time browsing and interacting with the website than waiting it to load in the first time.
These are the three ratings set by Google:
- Good: less than 0.2 seconds.
- Needs improvement: up to 0.5 seconds.
- Poor: over 0.5 seconds.
To improve it, we recomend you to shorten the execution time of JavaScript, minimize thrid-party scripts, adopt a content delivery network (CDN), optimize images sizes and use browser caching.
CLS measures the visual stability of your website. The elements of your site move around as the content is loaded, and this is reflected on the screen.
This is not ideal, since it can lead the user to accidentally click on something they don’t want to, thus impairing their browsing experience.
CLS measures how often these changes occur. When such a change occurs, an inversely proportional score value is added: the higher the score, the poorer the CLS of your website.
This is how Google rates this metric:
- Good: less than 0.1 seconds.
- Needs improvement: up to 2.5 seconds.
- Poor: over 0.25 seconds
To improve your metrics, consider avoiding pop-ups, optimizing the size of the images on your site, not using distracting animations that affect stability, and not including ads which disrupt your aesthetics or are excessively large.
In 2020, Google announced that Core Web Vitals would be a preponderant factor in web positioning by the following year. So if you don’t consider these metrics as part of your SEO strategy, your website is unlikely to appear among the main results on search engines.
In addition, these metrics complement other criteria, such as the use of https, mobile friendliness, loading speed and the removal of potentially annoying banners.
Google would prefer that all website developers begin incorporating the LCP, FID and CLS metrics as soon as possible, since these are among the most important criteria which the search engine takes into consideration.
Google Search Console is a very useful tool for checking these metrics, specifically under Enhancements> Top web metrics.
Here you will be able to see the exact differences between desktop and mobile metrics. Another interesting graph highlights urls in green -the optimized ones-, orange -needs improvement- and red -the ones with negative values-.
Core Web Vitals metrics have a major impact on how a website is positioned on search engines. The three metrics – LCP, FID and CLS – are constantly assessed by Google and, if your website scores poorly, Google will conclude that it doesn’t meet basic UX requirements, and provides a bad user experience.
Hence the importance of Core Web Vitals, whose three factors are closely linked and effectively act as a whole.
Google’s Core Web Vitals are a good way to analyze website issues in detail. Doing so as soon as possible will allow you to assess your options, improve your website and make your users’ lives easier.
As we have seen, Core Web Vitals are essential metrics when it comes to measuring user experience. The three main metrics for loading a website are:
- LCP (largest content).
- INP (site interactivity).
- CLS (visual stability).
These factors are merged with other positioning factors (mobile compatibility, https, etc.).
In a bid for transparency, Google continues to publish detailed information so that webmasters, SEOs and developers have an in-depth understanding of how each criteria impacts a site’s ranking.
If you don’t already, we recommend using Lighthouse and Google Search Console. You will be able to follow your site’s Core Web Vitals performance, and will probably notice room for improvement.
Here at Sherlock Communications, our trained professionals can optimize Core Web Vitals and keep up with Google’s positioning requirements, even as its algorithm keeps changing. Request a custom proposal today.
