How to Adapt Your SEO to Google’s Core Web Vitals and Core Update
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what is core web vitals
On May 4th, 2020, rolled out its second core search algorithm update for the year. There was a major update in the search ranking for different websites, leaving many companies in complete awry. Termed as the Google Core Update in May 2020, domains related to travel, tourism, live events, etc., experienced major fluctuations in their ranking.
Core Web Vitals, are three metrics that score a user’s experience loading a webpage. These metrics score how quickly page content loads, how quickly a browser loading a webpage can respond to a user’s input, and how unstable the content is as it loads in the browser.
Today, we’re building on this work and providing an early look at an upcoming Search ranking change that incorporates these page experience metrics. We will introduce a new signal that combines Core Web Vitals with our existing signals for page experience to provide a holistic picture of the quality of a user’s experience on a web page.
As part of this update, we’ll also incorporate the page experience metrics into our ranking criteria for the Top Stories feature in Search on mobile, and remove the AMP requirement from Top Stories eligibility. Google continues to support AMP, and will continue to link to AMP pages when available. We’ve also updated our developer tools to help site owners optimize their page experience.
Also See: How To Get $350 Credit To Run Google Ads For Free
A note on timing: We recognize many site owners are rightfully placing their focus on responding to the effects of COVID-19. The ranking changes described in this post will not happen before next year, and we will provide at least six months notice before they’re rolled out. We’re providing the tools now to get you started (and because site owners have consistently requested to know about ranking changes as early as possible), but there is no immediate need to take action.
What do you need to know about Google’s core web vitals?
Google considers Core Web Vitals to be a set of particular elements that contribute to a webpage’s overall user experience. Three specific page performance and user interaction statistics make up Core Web Vitals: greatest contently paint, initial input delay, and cumulative layout shift.
Everything in Core Web Vitals that satisfies Google will likewise satisfies your users. Even if Google doesn’t say so, marketers desire a website that provides a pleasant user experience. Users who have a positive user experience are less irritated, and websites with a positive user experience have higher conversions. Websites that are well-maintained and simple to use improve a company’s brand image.
How important are core web vitals for SEO?
Well, there are lots of answers that shed light on Core Web Vitals. As you can see, its importance has a significant impact on SEO. So here is my answer with some advice for Core Web Vitals optimization.
Core Web Vitals – is a set of three metrics that shows how your web pages perform.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – It evaluates the time it takes a page to display the largest above-the-fold content element on the screen.
- First Input Delay (FID) – It detects the responsiveness of the page. In simple terms, it measures the time from when the user can interact with content on the page to the time when a browser can respond to that interaction.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – It measures the movement of visible elements within the viewport. Simply put, this metric estimates the visual stability of webpage content.
- In case you need to improve some of these metrics for greater user experience and higher rankings, you can check these optimization tips.
In most cases
- How to improve Largest Contentful Paint:
- Optimize your media. Compress large images, use newer image formats, consider removing above-the-fold media or placing it below the fold, and use image placeholders for video content.
- Speed up your server response times. Think about enabling Keep-Alive and installing a service worker.
- Minify your code. So it doesn’t block your content from loading for too long.
- How to improve First Input Delay:
- Split long JavaScript tasks
- Defer unused JavaScript
- Load polyfills only when needed
- Minify JavaScript and CSS
- Use a web worker
- How to improve Cumulative Layout Shift:
- Optimize font loading
- Manage dynamically injected content
- Set image dimensions
- Reserve enough space for ads and embedded social media posts
That’s it, folks! Using these tips, you can improve the necessary metrics and get the highest optimization scores.
Also see: How To Promote Your YouTube channel For Free
- How to improve Largest Contentful Paint:
Summary
We believe user engagement will improve as experiences on the web get better — and that by incorporating these new signals into Search, we’ll help make the web better for everyone. We hope that sharing our roadmap for the page experience updates and launching supporting tools ahead of time will help the diverse ecosystem of web creators, developers, and businesses to improve and deliver more delightful user experiences.
Please stay tuned for our future updates that will communicate more specific guidance on the timing for these changes to come into effect. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, visit our webmaster forums.
