Google has introduced a new ranking signal in 2021. You may have heard of it if you’re keeping in the loop of all vital SEO news (wait, so you DON’T read blogs every week about new ranking factors and Google algorithm updates? WHAT!?).
Nonetheless, we’re here to tell you why you should pay attention to the new Core Web Vitals (CWV) factors.
Core Web Vitals are a trio of factors that Google considers important in a website page’s user experience (UX). The three factors consist of specific user interaction and page speed measurements combined to form a unique “page experience” score.
This ‘page experience’ is what Google has announced will be a ranking signal come May 2021.
If that doesn’t make any sense to you, perhaps this will:
Basically, from May onwards, Google will start assessing a page’s overall UX and give it a score. That score is made up of these Core Web Vitals.
The real takeaway here is that CWV aren’t explicitly anything new. Not to us anyway. Having said that, your rankings will be affected by CWV factors.
Before you stress, don’t worry! We’ve outlined what those three factors are, and what each of them mean.
Google plans to make website page experience an official ranking factor. It’s not a surprise that they’ve introduced this, and if anything, we’re surprised it’s taken them this long!
The page experience ranking signal, which consists of the Core Web Vitals (don’t worry, we’ll explain them in more detail), will measure aspects of how users will perceive a webpage’s interaction.
So the Core Web Vitals will form part of new search signals, alongside:
So optimising website pages for these factors makes it easier and more positive for users! That’s always going to be a plus for any SEO campaign, and luckily for us, we’re experts at optimising sites based on these signals anyway. So it’s pretty much second-nature for us.
We always optimise for mobile as a priority, ensure there’s a valid SSL in place and that there are no intrusive interstitials. We’re experienced with ensuring sites stay optimised and that nothing that interferes with them could break them.
We’re telling you about the new Core Web Vitals because they should give you more of an idea of what Google considers good page speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Even if a site looks good and is responsive, sometimes we have to dig further and use our technical brains to get a content response time of 3 seconds down to 1 second.
Google has defined the following as the Core Web Vitals:
These metrics are designed to help us measure a site’s user experience regarding loading, interactivity and stability of content. In other words, when you want to click on a picture on a page, we’re going to make sure that page’s content doesn’t shift, so you end up clicking on ads or content you don’t want. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to tap something with your finger, and the page shifts, so you end up missing that completely and clicking something you didn’t want to click.
Core Web Vitals may well change from year to year, so they are by no means set in stone. It’s just to help Google assess how good your website pages are from your users’ perspectives.
LCP refers to how long a page takes to load for an actual user. In other words, LCP is the time it takes from clicking on a link to seeing the majority of the content on the following page.
Just to clarify, LCP isn’t the same metric as other page speed measurements. LCP focuses on users being able to see and interact with the visible parts of the page.
A site’s LCP is measured from ‘poor’ to ‘needs improvement’ to ‘good’. Generally speaking, an ideal LCP score is 2.5 seconds or faster, and anything over 4 seconds is considered ‘poor’.
You can see LCP data in Google Search Console on your entire site. Instead of analysing pages one at a time, you get a list of URLs that show their respective LCP as good, poor or somewhere in between.
Of course, it’s difficult to optimise LCP for large pages, or pages with several features or high-res images. It’ll often require more than removing some images, large page elements or third-party scripts, and we’ll need to look at the page’s code or even the web hosting to see if that improves the LCP score.
FID is the time it takes for a page to become interactive.
Can users interact with your page quickly and easily? That’s what FID measures; the time it takes for users to actually interact with your page. This could be choosing an option from a menu, clicking a link in the site navigation, opening up an accordion panel, and so much more.
Google is focusing on FID because it’s trying to assess how real-life users interact with websites.
Like LCP, they have criteria for what constitutes a good and bad FID. For clarity, an FID that’s less than 100ms is considered acceptable, whereas 300ms and above is a lousy FID score.
There is a bit of an anomaly here; it’s not assessing how long it takes something to happen on a page, but rather the time it takes for users to be able to do something. For content pages like blogs, articles and case studies, FID probably isn’t going to be that important, as the only ‘interaction’ that page will likely get will be scrolling, zooming in and out, or clicking on a link.
For registration pages, login pages, signups or other pages which rely on interactions, FID is massive. With these types of pages, loading content quickly isn’t the goal. But instead, how quickly you’re able to interact with the username and password fields to type your details in. This can be improved by minimising or deferring JavaScript on those pages, assessing the need for non-critical scripts (such as Google Analytics) or looking closely at browser caching. All things that we do here anyway!
CLS is how ‘stable’ a page is as it loads.
In other words, if site elements move around as your page is loading, it means your CLS is higher. The lower your CLS is, the better it is for users who interact with your page.
In an ideal world, your page elements need to be as stable as possible as the page loads. This way, users don’t have to remind themselves where links, images, and content are supposed to be when the page is loaded or when they click on something by mistake.
Again, like LCP and FID, CLS is scored in the range of ‘good’, ‘needs improvement’ and ‘poor’.
An ideal CLS to have is less than 0.1, and anything over a score of 0.25 is considered poor. There’s no real unit of measurement; it’s a nominal, made-up figure but one which will play a part in how Google assesses your site.
To achieve as low a CLS as possible, using set-size attribute dimensions for media (video, images, GIFs etc.) can go a long way. That way, the browser will know how much space that element will take up and won’t alter as the page loads. Other acceptable practices would be to ensure ads are allocated reserved areas (as they can unexpectedly appear) and add new UI elements below the fold.
Chances are, you won’t need to know the ins and outs of Core Web Vitals on a supremely technical level. Let’s face it, having a deep technical understanding of code, caching, and plugins and how they all fit together nicely might make your head hurt!
Well, okay, you may know lots about coding and development IF you’re a web developer (and we work with lots of them). But if you aren’t already clued into Core Web Vitals, now is the time to pay attention to them. It looks as though Core Web Vitals are here to stay for the long term.
It’s very simple. Just fill in the form and we will be in touch with your reports. We will also ask you to book a 30 min call with us so we can run through the report and explain what the issues are with your site, what your goals are and how we can help you.
