Core Web Vitals are factors related to speed, responsiveness, and visual stability to help site owners measure user experience on the web.
Core Web Vitals are crucial for Google SEO.
In this article, I will discuss what is meant by Core Web Vitals, why Google considers it in its Page Experience algorithm and how is page speed related to it.
Let’s begin!
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics to measure the real-world user experience on the web. It consists of the following metrics:
1- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): LCP measures loading performance of your web page. To offer a good user experience, LCP should happen within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading.
2- First Input Delay (FID): FID measures interactivity of your web page. If you want to give an excellent experience to users on your website, then the FID of your page should be less than 100 milliseconds.
3- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): CLS measures visual stability of your web page. CLS of your web page should be less than 0.1 seconds to give a good experience to the user.
4- Time to First Byte (TTFB): TTFB is also related to the speed of your web page. It measures the time your server takes to send a response to the user’s browser. It should be under 100 milliseconds.
5- Total Blocking Time (TBT) & Time to Interactive (TTI): TBT & TTI are lab metrics that are vital in catching and examining potential interactive issues that impact FID.
Why Is Page Speed Important?
Having a good loading speed is very important in order to achieve good results on your website.
When the loading speed of your website is not good, then visitors will leave your site and visit any of your competitor’s sites. This increases the bounce rate on your site.
Also, Page Speed is one of the ranking factors used by Google.
To achieve better rankings of the website, the page speed of the website should be more than 50.
Benefits Of Good Page Speed
- Increases overall website traffic.
- Decreases bounce rate.
- Drives more conversions and sales.
- Offers great user experience.
- Helps to increase website rankings.
Related: How To Check Website Rankings
How To Measure Core Web Vitals Score?
Here are the top tools to measure the Core Web Vitals score:
1- PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insights is a tool to check your website speed on both mobile and desktop. It also helps you to optimize your website for better speed by providing various actionable suggestions.
Here is an example:
As you can see, Search Engine Land doesn’t pass the Core Web Vitals test. The LCP, FID, and CLS scores are highlighted by the tool. Also, you can see a list of suggestions to improve the score. You can achieve this by performing actions against the opportunities provided by PageSpeed Insights.
2- web.dev
web.dev analyzes your domain on the basis of four metrics. These are performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO.
Related: What is SEO? Complete Guide to Learn SEO
It also displays the First Contentful Paint (FCP), time to interactive, speed index, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), and total blocking time.
Related: How To Fix FCP Issue Longer Than 3 Seconds
Now, to improve these scores, web.dev provides different recommendations as follows:
Simply follow the links for fixing the different issues on your domain that is impacting the page speed and user experience.
3- Google Search Console
Search Console is a webmasters tool that helps you to measure site performance. Google has recently added Core Web Vitals reports in it to analyze which web pages on your website do not pass the Core Web Vitals test.
Here is an example of a report displayed by the Google Search Console:
As seen in the image above, all the poor pages are marked in red while the passed URLs are marked in green.
Just below this graph, you can see details of these issues like status, type of matrix, validation status, and URL groups.
You can identify the sample URLs returned by Google and then analyze them one by one on the PageSped Insights tool.
4- Lighthouse
Lighthouse is an in-browser Core Web Vitals tool provided by Google for developers. You can access the Lighthouse tool directly from your Chrome browser by clicking on the “developer tools” and selecting “Lighthouse” from the options.
For example, if you generate a report, then you will get a report similar to the one below.
The Lighthouse shows you the performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO report of the website.
After that, you can do an in-depth analysis of every score by clicking on it.
For example, if you click on performance, then you see a similar screen like below image.
If we talk about performance report, then Lighthouse provides the same report as PageSpeed Insights.
The difference between Lighthouse and PageSpeed Insights is that Lighthouse is an in-browser tool, and it also provides other reports like SEO and accessibility.
Methods To Optimize LCP Score
- Upgrade your server.
- Create AMP pages.
- Optimize images and videos.
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
- Enable server-side caching on the website.
- Render block JavaScript and CSS files.
- Minify CSS files.
Related: How To Fix LCP Issue: Longer Than 4s (Desktop) or (Mobile)
Methods To Optimize FID Score
- Optimize JavaScript execution.
- Break down long codes into smaller scripts.
- Block unused JavaScript codes.
- Reduce the impact of third-party codes.
Methods To Optimize CLS Score
- Always use aspect ratio on images.
- Reserve space for ads to avoid layout shifts.
- Provide placeholders for your embeds.
- Use Font Loading API to reduce time to load.
Related: Best Native Ads Networks
Core Web Vitals Extensions
To help you measure and optimize core web vitals, there are some extensions available on the web.
Here are the top Core Web Vitals extensions to improve your score:
1- Web Vitals
Web Vitals is an extension for measuring Core Web Vitals metrics including LCP, CLS, and FID.
By using this extension, you check if there is an issue on any web page on your website.
It offers different color badges to help you monitor the Core Web Vital issues of a web page.
For example, if the web page passes the Core Web Vitals, then it will update the badge color with green. In case, the page does not pass then you will see a red badge.
2- Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals is yet another chrome extension to measure different metrics of Core Web Vitals. Google officially provides it as a developer tool. It highlights metrics like CLS and LCP on the page itself. This functionality helps the developers to understand which elements are causing the issue.
Core Web Vitals – FAQ
Is Core Web Vitals A Major Ranking Signal?
Yes, Core Web Vitals is a major ranking factor. Google officially said that they are going to make Core Web Vitals a ranking factor/signal and also add it to their algorithms in the next year in May 2021.
Core Web Vitals Is A Part Of Which Algorithm?
Core Web Vitals is a part of Google Page Experience Update Algorithm.
Related: Page Experience Update: Optimization Guide [2020]
What Are The Best Core Web Vital Scores?
| Metrics | Good |
| FID | <100ms |
| CLS | <0.1 |
| LCP | <2.5s |
| TTFB | <500ms |
| TBT | <300ms |
| TTL | 30s – 5min |
What Is The Launch Date Of Core Web Vitals (Page Experience Update)?
Core Web Vitals will officially be rolled out on May 28, 2020.
Conclusion
If you want good rankings for your website then you must optimize your web pages for Core Web Vitals.
Fixing Core Web Vitals issues involves several technical changes. If you are not from a technical background then you can get help from a developer who is familiar with these metrics.
