Website Performance Optimization Specialists

Google Core Web Vitals are the factors that Google uses to determine how well a website provides users with a good experience.

We can break these down into three categories:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
• First Input Delay (FID)
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

You can track the three core vitals by logging into your Google Search Console account.

What makes a good SEO strategy? According to Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, there are three main aspects of one:

1. Relevant written content: Your website should contain relevant, high-quality content that your users want to read. It should contain applicable topics and incorporate phrasing that’s familiar to them.
2. Google-friendly content: Your content shouldn’t just appeal to experts within your industry. It should read well to a Google bot, meaning it should have adequate on-page optimization. If a search engine can’t interpret your website, it likely won’t recommend it to your potential readers.
3. Excellent SEO signals: Satisfactory SEO signals aren’t necessarily how many page authorities or backlinks you have. Instead, they’re signs that you can offer a superior on-page experience to your users and good content delivery. Some examples of good SEO signals include mobile-first optimization and fast website speed.

Google core vitals tie into this third component.

You can dedicate a lot of time building an aesthetically pleasing website with informative, engaging content. However, your efforts will be for naught with the release of Google’s Page Experience Update.

The new search algorithm adjustments will no longer consider quality content alone. Even appropriate keyword densities, page authorities, and backlinks won’t be enough to earn impressive rankings.

You’ll have to improve the quality of the overall user experience and hone your technical SEO optimization. Your website can no longer get away with offering a slow load time or page responsiveness.

Read on to learn about the three Core Web Vitals. We’ll describe what they are and explain how you can use them to get through the page experience update and increase your SERP Google rankings.

Tracking Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is an essential Core Web Vital to your website’s performance.

The need for speed is real. According to a study by Google, more than half of Internet users will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. Even if you constructed your website beautifully, most of its visitors wouldn’t get to see it if it takes too long to load.

When you track your site’s LCP, you can determine if it’s providing your users with an optimal experience in terms of speed.

Time is valuable, according to some research on Amazon. Adding just one second to the company’s loading time could cause them to lose more than $1.5 billion in a year. Time doesn’t seem that disposable now, does it? Use this Core Web Vital to stay ahead.

Ideally, your website should have an LCP score of 2.5 seconds or less.

While 2.5 seconds is ideal for mobile platforms, it may be too slow for a desktop user. Try to get your “Above the Fold” content to load within 1.2 seconds for desktop users.

Are you unsure of how to measure this component of the page experience update? A simple solution could be to measure the 75th percentile of all site loads. Separate these loads across desktop and mobile devices to get a more accurate picture. If you find lackluster results, you’ll know something’s wrong and conclude that you need to implement changes regarding this Core Web Vital.

If you’ve discovered that your site’s LCP score is low, you may feel defeated. How on Earth are you supposed to improve this essential component of Google’s page experience update?

Every website will require unique changes. However, we can help you pinpoint the cause of a low LCP score. Read about these three potential causes below:

Consider the hosting provider that you signed up with. If you delegated the task to someone else, contact them to determine who your hosting provider is. Was it a discounted, shared hosting provider?

Website owners often choose cheap hosting providers to save a few bucks every month. However, this choice can be detrimental to your website performance. A sub-par hosting provider will offer limited assistance in case something goes wrong. One likely won’t address crashes efficiently, so your website may stay slow or completely down for a while.

Whenever you’re building or maintaining a website, choose your hosting provider wisely. Don’t settle for a bottom-of-the-barrel site that offers a slow CPU, less RAM, and lagging Internet connection. Also, be sure to check for CSS and JavaScript issues.

Your server might also become overloaded with traffic if your hosting provider isn’t managing it properly.

A slow server response can cause your Google ranking to plummet. Every page will take longer to load, and you’ll have many dissatisfied users directed toward your site.

Unfortunately, you can’t implement these web assets to your heart’s desire (unless you want your website performance and Google ranking to suffer).

You’ll need to be selective about which ones you incorporate. If you can’t part with any of your favorite web assets, you should at least consider optimizing them. This way, they will load onto your page faster and let your users experience the positive side of Google’s page experience update.

JavaScript controls the specific flow of the content on a website page. It loads and unloads specific sections and re-renders them if necessary.

One example of how JavaScript works is through slider plugins. JS loads all the web assets on a single page load. As a result, the web page will load pretty slowly because the browser needs to wait for all the assets to finish loading.

We’re not saying to stay away from JS. But, it’s essential to note that JS can incite frustration among site users who want to view your entire page immediately.

To address these issues with technical SEO optimization, we recommend balancing your use of JavaScript and CSS. Attempting to load too much JavaScript at once can cause users to abandon your site and lower your Google ranking.

You might be wondering, Why does it matter how long it takes for my users to interact with my site? Won’t they just scroll and click merrily regardless of how long it takes? Won’t the information be enough to distract them from “slow” responses?

A slow First Input Delay (FID) is not something you want to become acquainted with. It means that your site will keep users out for a long time before the browser can respond to whatever action they took (clicking, scrolling, etc.)

Your entire web page load speeds will also slow down, resulting in a sub-par user experience.

Imagine you’re trying to learn about a company’s services. After landing on its homepage, you try clicking on one of its service pages. You experience an unexpected delay. Many users view even small delays as jolting and off-putting. They’ll likely click off and find another website to meet their needs, which will cause your Google ranking to suffer.

Ideally, you want to aim for an FID score of under 100ms for every action that a user can take on your site. However, this may be difficult to achieve with every single action. Rather, you should aim for a First Input Delay (FID) score between 100ms and 300ms. Google’s page experience update considers anything above 300ms as poor, so make adjustments as necessary.

Tracking the First Input Delay can prove to be a bit tricky at first. Users must interact with your pages if you’re to collect any relevant information.

This means you’ll require access to real-world data to conclude whether your website passes the First Input Delay (FID) measurement.

GSC has developed an important proxy that’s available to enhance your technical SEO optimization.

Total Blocking Time can replicate First Input Delay (FID) by mimicking a real user’s experience. It also accompanies synthetic data that a lab environment creates.

GSC calculates TBT by adding up the time it takes for all long tasks that need to occur during page load. Some of these long tasks include:

• CSS style execution/parsing
• JavaScript execution/parsing
• Network timeouts
• Any resource requests (including sync or XHR)

You’ll get your Total Blocking Time (TBT) when you take the sum of all these tasks.

If a performance issue arises, your user will have to wait longer to load your pages’ elements. They’ll experience a higher TBT because they won’t be able to interact with your website.

It’s wise to use First Input Delay (FID) and Total Blocking Time (TBT) together to determine how interactive your WordPress site is.

If your site’s page performance is noticeably slow, it likely has a high TBT. Remember, the TBT demonstrates the delay between a user’s input and the page’s response.

It’s also essential to remember that the TBT is simply a way to determine your FID under ideal conditions.

You can only collect accurate First Input Delay (FID) data under real-life circumstances.

However, it’s helpful to combine lab and field testing to get a comprehensive idea of how your website performs. You can pinpoint any performance problems to facilitate more interaction.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is undesirable. You want to avoid it whenever possible, as it interrupts the user’s experience.

Think of when you’re performing your own research online. You land on an article and start reading. However, your learning journey soon gets interrupted. The image carousel at the top of your article is loading new images distractingly. The new images pop up at different intervals and heights.

Every time a new image appears, the content slides up or down. You have to locate the sentence you left off on and pick up where you left off. This experience can become incredibly frustrating and cause you to click off.

You wouldn’t want to put your site’s users through this. As a WordPress site owner, minimizing layout changes on every page is a key component of technical SEO optimization.

The Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric will demonstrate which page elements are causing distracting experiences and inform you of how to improve the layout.

A decent Cumulative Layout Score is 0.1 or lower. If your Cumulative Layout Score (CLS) lies somewhere between 0.1 and 0.25, you’re doing just fine. However, you should consider making adjustments if your score is above 0.25, as this indicates visual instability for your users.

Your Google Console will tell you if your Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score is average or not.