A website’s core web vitals are the essential elements that Google looks for when determining a site’s rank in search engine results pages (SERPs). If you want to improve your organic rankings, it is essential to ensure that your website’s core web vitals are in good shape. This blog post will discuss what these vital elements are and how you can optimize them to help your website rank higher in SERPs.
Why are core web vitals important?
In 2020, Google announced that it would be looking at a set of elements grouped as “core web vitals” to determine the organic rankings. These elements include loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability of a website. Marketers need to focus on these factors to rank higher on SERPs.
What are the core web vitals?
The three main core web vitals that Google will be looking at are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
Largest Contentful Paint: measures how long it takes for your site’s main content to load. This can be an image or text block that appears above the fold when someone visits your page from a mobile device. The ideal score for this metric is less than two seconds, according to Google’s WebPageTest tool.
First Input Delay: measures how long it takes for a user to start typing in a search query after landing on your page. This metric is important because the faster someone can input information into your site, the more likely they are to stay on your page. The ideal score for this metric is less than 500 milliseconds (ms).
Cumulative Layout Shift: measures how much a website’s layout changes as a user scrolls down the page. This metric looks at scroll position, size of elements, and font sizes. According to Google’s Lighthouse tool, the ideal score is less than 0.50.
How to improve core web vitals?
With the newest announcement, businesses rushed to improve their core web vitals. But without concrete information on how to improve them, many struggled. Fortunately, we are two years into studying the newest update, and there are a few things to consider if you want to start improving your core web vitals.
Optimize your WordPress hosting
If your site is not loading fast enough for users, you may need to switch hosting providers. Some WordPress hosts claim that their servers are optimized specifically for the platform. Still, in reality, they’re just using shared hosting with little customization other than installing some plugins or changing settings within the wp-admin panel. We recommend using an SSD-based VPS server (such as DigitalOcean) instead of traditional web hosts such as GoDaddy or BlueHost. This allows more control over how resources are allocated on a per-site basis rather than sharing them amongst others on one large server, which can slow down everyone’s sites if there are traffic spikes due to another website’s popularity hosted by the same company.
Optimize images
Images often take up significant space on a website and can slow down the loading of your pages. You can optimize images by compressing them using TinyPNG or JPEGmini.
Reduce the number of scripts you’re calling
If you have too many scripts loading on a page, it can cause delays in page loading. You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to identify which scripts are causing problems.
Use caching
Caching stores static versions of your pages, so they don’t need to be regenerated each time someone visits your site. This will speed up page load times for repeat visitors.
Minimize redirects
Redirects occur when a user clicks on a link but is taken to a different destination than expected. Too many redirects can slow down your page load times. You can use the Redirect Mapper tool to see how many redirects are happening on your site and where they’re going.
Use a content delivery network (CDN)
A CDN stores copies of your website’s static files on servers worldwide so that they can be delivered faster to users who are geographically far from your primary server.
There are several things that you can do to start improving the core web vitals of your website. Improving these factors will inevitably help you achieve better organic rankings. If you’re looking for more information on how to improve your website’s performance, we highly recommend using Google PageSpeed Insights and the Lighthouse tool. These tools will help you identify which aspects of your website need improvement and give you specific instructions on fixing them. Improving core web vitals will help with organic rankings. And if you don’t have a clear idea of how best to work with core web vitals, consider talking to a professional.
