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7 May 2021
SEO and Google's Upcoming Core Web Vitals Update
Some of you have heard of it already. One of Google's most recent developments has been its Core Web Vitals update. This update adds three search signals to contribute to a website's rankings in search engines. Google plans to launch the update starting this coming June, making it one of the key marketing elements of the year for webmasters to consider. If you're unfamiliar with Core Web Vitals and what this update means for your online marketing efforts, there are certain aspects you should know about and steps you can take to prepare your website for optimal performance.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Specifically, Google's Core Web Vitals update will contribute three of seven new ranking signals that affect a website's "page experience" score. These signals include:
Core Web Vitals serve as direct ranking signals, but the exact weight of these signals is still unclear. More details below on each of them. The idea behind these signals is for Google to ensure that websites provide visitors with the optimal user experience, which is an aspect that Google has been increasingly emphasizing over the years.
If a website features "poor" Core Web Vitals, it will be disqualified from "Top Stories" results and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), the latter of which is vital for webpages to appear in mobile search results. To make sure your website performs the way it should, there are some ways to optimize your website and boost your page experience score.
How to Optimize for Core Web Vitals
To help you prepare your website for Core Web Vitals and achieve a high page experience score, implement the following steps.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile Responsiveness
Every webpage on your website should be optimized for mobile users. A majority of visitors are likely to visit your site through mobile, and the user experience (UX) design of your site could deter many visitors if you're not making it mobile-ready.
Make sure your webpages fit on mobile screens and that different features continue to work on a mobile browser. You can test mobile usability through Google Search Console, and manually test the site on your own mobile device to see if everything is accessible and looks good.
Optimize LCP with Preloaded Elements
You can accelerate page loading speeds by preloading certain resources on your webpages, which can positively impact your site's LCP metric, or Largest Contentful Paint. Tools like Chrome DevTools can reveal which on-page elements are your LCPs, which you can then optimize to load faster by prioritizing certain elements above the rest of the page.
Improve FID by Optimizing Your Website's Reaction Time
The FID, or First Input Delay metric, measures the amount of time it takes for users to wait for the browser to respond to any type of action taken on your webpages. If it takes too long for the browser to react, visitors could be quick to leave your site.
One of the main causes of a long FID is long tasks, which are a kind of JavaScript code that may cause issues with a website, including unresponsiveness or even freezing. Minimizing those tasks can help improve FID. You can use Chrome DevTools to identify long tasks and find out what's behind them. From there, you can take steps to break them up into smaller tasks.
Take CLS into Account by Creating Sufficient Space for Visuals
You can optimize for CLS, or Cumulative Layout Shift, by making sure there's enough space on the page for visual elements, including images and embeds. If you don't create sufficient space for these elements, they may shift as the page loads, which could rearrange content on the page, potentially frustrating the user and causing them to click on the wrong link or other assets. Simply reserve areas of the page for different elements, which will make sure the page loads uniformly for each user.
Get Rid of Annoying Pop-ups and Other Obstructions
In optimizing the usability of your website to appeal to every user and improve Core Web Vitals, you should also consider the effect that pop-ups or other obstructions may have on user experience. While you may want to prompt users to subscribe, take advantage of a sale, or perform another task with a pop-up window, keep your pop-ups within view without preventing the user from browsing your site. You can achieve this by having pop-ups appear toward the bottom or top of the page as opposed to the center, and make it easy for users to click out of the pop-up to resume browsing the full page.
Keep Your Website Consistently Secure
In addition to usability, a core component of any website is a secure browsing experience. People want to know that the information they submit on your site is secure and that they won't encounter any risks that may compromise their systems.
In addition to ensuring that your website doesn't expose users to phishing, malware, or other malicious content, you should use a secure HTTPS connection for each page as opposed to HTTP. More tech-savvy users may be quicker to trust your website if they see that it includes an HTTPS certificate that keeps their information out of the wrong hands.
Maintain an Optimal User Experience
Ultimately, the best way to optimize your website for Core Web Vitals is to consistently facilitate a good user experience. By keeping your website visually organized, mobile-friendly, fast to load, unobstructed, and secure, you'll be able to earn a higher page experience score that keeps you on Google's good side. You'll also improve your credibility among users if they have a good impression of your website from the start of their browsing journey. When you combine these efforts with a comprehensive SEO strategy, you'll be able to appear on top of search engine results pages (SERPs) and keep people on your website once they land there. |