Core Web Vitals is a package of metrics that Google introduced to help measure the quality of user experience on a website. They form part of a larger package of metrics (Web Vitals) and remain the three most critical metrics to measure the quality of user experience. The three Core Web Vitals include:
- Largest Contentful Paint – measures loading.
- First Input Delay – measures interactivity.
- Cumulative Layout Shift – measures visual stability.
But just how important are these core web vitals?
Is Google Core Web Vitals Important?
Yes. Aside from improving visual user experience, improving Core Web Vitals may impact your search engine ranking. Google has stated that content-related signals are stronger for SEO than Page Experience signals.
So, improving your site speed may help you rank higher on search engines.
How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint
It’s essential to look at what to consider when improving the largest contentful paint (LCP) before dwelling on the methods. You must consider:
- Images
- Image tags
- Video thumbnails
- Background images with CSS
- Text elements
When planning to improve the largest contentful paint, you should consider following the procedures below:
Optimize Your Images
Most websites have a large image on the above-the-fold, considered for large content paint. Optimizing these images improves your large content color.
For easy optimization of your images, you should consider using a third-party image CDN like imagekit.io. Using a third-party image CDN allows you to run your errands and leave it to optimize the images on your behalf.
Besides, an image CDN stays on the edge of technology evolution, providing you with the best possible features with minimum ongoing investment.
Preload Critical Resources
The browser may not prioritize loading a vital resource that sometimes influences LCP. For instance, a banner image might fail to load because the browser may not know about the picture unless it’s downloaded and parsed.
For such resources, you may preload them to prioritize the loading.
Reduce Server Response Times
If your server delays responding to a request, it may increase the time it takes to render the page on the screen. As a result, it negatively impacts page speed metrics, including LCP.
Improve your server response time by:
- Assessing and optimizing your servers
- Use content delivery network
- Preconnect to third-party origins
- Serve content cache-first using a Service Worker
- Compress text files
Remove Render-blocking Resources
A browser parses the DOM tree instantly after the HTML page from your server. Any external stylesheet or JS file in the DOM causes the browser to pause for them before parsing the DOM tree.
These external JS and CSS files slow down LCP time. To cut down the JS blocking time, you must do the following:
- Avoid loading unnecessary bundles.
- Align critical CSS.
- Minify and compress the content.
Optimize LCP for Client-side Rendering
A considerable amount of JavaScript is necessary for any client-side rendered website. Failing to optimize the JavaScript sent to the browser denies users the opportunity to interact or see any content on the page unless the content has been downloaded and executed.
How to Improve First Input Delay
First Input Delay (FID) is integral to understanding your site’s user experience. Let’s look at some ways of improving it.
- Slow down or eliminate unnecessary third-party scripts. The unnecessary scripts may prevent the vital ones from performing on time.
- Apply web workers. Using wen workers allows you to run scripts in the background without interfering with the Main Thread.
- Compress and minify. Compressing allows you to rewrite the binary code within a file. Minifying includes removing unnecessary parts from your code, like comments and line breaks. These approaches reduce file size, easing the execution of your code.
Additionally, you can reduce unused CSS or use the “idle until urgent” approach.
How to Fix Cumulative Layout Shift
Reducing cumulative layout shift improves user experience by keeping elements fixed on a page even after a change.
- Add aspect ratios on images. Modern browsers set the default aspect ratio based on images’ width and height features, allowing developers to set width and height as normal.
- To avoid the cumulative layout shift on images, always put the width and height attributes of your photos and video elements.
- Reserve space for the ad slot. Sites manage to offer dynamic ad sizes but reduce layout shifts by styling the element before the loading of the ad tag library. Reserving the ad slot size prevents layout shifts during off-screen and loading.
- Precompute space for embeds. You can initiate this with a placeholder or fallback. As a result, you prevent them from causing CLS.
Understanding how core web vitals affect your website can be challenging. East End Yovth Marketing, an organic SEO agency, is here to help you. We understand the importance of SEO and make sure our client’s website ranks high on search engines.