What is Core Web Vitals?
- December 20, 2021
- Scott Keever SEO
A Guide To Understanding Core Web Vitals
In 2020, Core Web Vitals was introduced as a new metric that Google and search engines pay attention to when ranking websites. Basically, the core web vitals are about your site’s user experience and site speed. Unfortunately, there are many webmasters who don’t pay too much attention to the speed, latency, and loading time of their website when building it. However, this has become more important in recent times, especially site speed if you want your rankings to improve.
Once you own a website, you should start to make improvements on your site so that you increase your site’s speed and ensure it pasts the tests on webpagetest.org, especially when it comes to web core vitals. We will actually check out and fully evaluate your site free of charge as well as make a plan so that your site passes core web vitals.
The core web vitals as defined by Google has three areas that have to be scored. These include LCP, FID, and CLS.
– Largest contentful paint (LCP): This refers to the amount of time taken for the biggest elements on your site to render and become visible. It is counted from the moment that the person requests the URL. In most cases, the biggest element is usually a video or photo or even a block-level text element. This is quite essential due to the fact that it lets the user know that the web page is being loaded.
– Aggregated LCP (LCP): The amount of time that 75% of the visits to a particular website take to reach LCP.
– First input delay (FID): This refers to the amount of time between the user’s first interaction with a web page such as by clicking a button or link to the time when the user’s browser actually responds. This measurement is taken from the interactive element that is clicked initially. This is quite important to measure due to the fact that it shows interactivity.
– Aggregated FID (Agg FID): This shows that three-quarters of the visitors to that particular web page have the same value.
– Cumulative layout shift (CLS): This refers to how much the web page shifts while it is being loaded. This is a score between 0 and 1. When the score is 0, that indicates that no shifting occurred. However, if there is a score of 1, that indicates that the page shifted the most that it could. This is an important metric because too much shifting would create a very poor experience for the user.
– Aggregated CLS (Agg CLS): 75% of the visitors to a web page have this lowest CLS.
To put it in simpler terms, the LCP or largest contentful paint is the amount of time that the biggest page element takes in order to load. This is used as a marker. The first input delay is also about the length of time that the page takes to load but it pays more attention to the length of time it takes for the user to be capable of making an input on the page.
So, the core web vitals is a measurement of how long the user takes to be capable of interacting with a website or web page. Now, keep in mind that CLS is very important because it shows the degree to which the elements on a web page move around when it is being loaded. You don’t want the content to shift around at all or much. It is best that it is static and properly sized for the space.
The entire point of these updates is for Google to let everyone know how important page loading time and user experience are in website design. This is due to the fact that even a small 1-second delay in loading time directly increases a website’s bounce rate.
Additionally, Google also stated that they will continuously work on their ranking signals and they will be updated and improved every year. Therefore, you can easily assume that core web vitals is only the start of a larger strategy so that website owners can more actively work on the design of their websites. In the times gone, a good deal of SEO was about ensuring that your on-page SEO was fixed by placing the correct keywords on every page. However, there is a much wider shift to the entire design of the website.
Google has indicated that these ranking signals would become a strong aspect of their ranking algorithm. They even placed a page on the Google search console for webmasters to take note of this. On the search console, you will be able to find a page labeled core web vitals.
You can use this page to check on the performance of your site when it comes to your user experience. Your content would be placed into 3 categories a good, poor, and needs improvement. The information on this page would be directly taken from Chrome and real usage.
The Page Insights Tool by Google has also undergone a couple of changes. There is different information here than in the Google search console. Basically, in the insights tool, you will find your site’s measurements for CLS, FID, and LCP.
Google has also indicated that they will add core web vitals to their other ranking factors to form the signal for page experience. It is possible to have a low page experience score and still rank quite high in Google. However, you should still strive to improve your page experience score.
This score is basically made up of factors such as HTTPS security, your site’s mobile-friendliness, safety as well as a lack of interstitials. The last factor is important because interstitials are quite annoying for people visiting your website. This is due to the fact that users won’t be able to read or look at your content without closing the ad. Be sure to also look in your search console for any security issues or vulnerabilities and fix them as soon as you can.
The mobile-friendliness score of your website is made up of many factors. Google already launched its mobile-first indexing and this was a sign to take this seriously. When it comes to your site is mobile-friendly, it needs to show correctly sized font, photos, the buttons should be adequately spaced etc.
You can easily find out how mobile-friendly your site is by using Google’s mobile-friendly tool. This will help you to improve your site and you should have a look at Web.dev for more help.
Google Web Vitals Defined
This is a metric released in 2020 that is meant to measure a website or web page’s user experience and site speed.
LCP Defined
LCP refers to the largest contentful paint. It is the amount of time taken to render the biggest element on a web page once the user requests the page. In most cases, this element is typically a video or image.
FID Defined
FID refers to the first input delay and is a measurement of the time between the user’s first interaction on the page and the response by the browser.
CLS Defined
CLS is the cumulative layout shift and is a measurement of how much the page shifts upon loading. This is typically scored between 0 and 1. A score of 1 indicates that the page shifted the most and a score of 0 indicates that the page did not shift at all. A lot of shifting would create a poor experience for the user.
