What is Core Web Vitals and how will it affect your website in 2024

In its journey to deliver better organic results and user-centered experiences, Google has announced a new ranking factor for organic results that massively influences SEO: The Core Web Vitals.

What is Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals is a set of essential metrics introduced by Google to evaluate and improve user experience on websites. As of 2021, these metrics have become a key factor in evaluating a website’s performance in terms of speed, interactivity and visual stability, having a direct impact on search engine rankings.

The main purpose of Core Web Vitals is to provide a clear measure of user experience while browsing a website. Google aims to provide users with a faster and more comfortable browsing experience, and through these metrics, it can adjust its search algorithm to promote sites that meet the performance criteria. Basically, Core Web Vitals helps developers and site owners improve load times and on-page interactions, which will contribute to a better overall experience.

Core Web Vitals is a significant update announced by Google for implementation from May 2021 that will measure the actual user experience of a website. Core Web Vitals is focused on three main signals:

• • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – the largest piece of content on each page of a website
• • First Input Delay (FID) – the speed of a user’s interactivity / interaction with the site
• • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – visual stability of the site

Google Core Web Vitals

For all of these 3 metrics, Google has also provided some values that we can report against:

Google Core Web Vitals Values

Now, let’s explain each one a little bit.

LCP (largest contentful paint) – measures the loading speed of the largest piece of content on a page of a website.

That piece of content can be:

• • an html code, an image, a CSS or Javascript file, etc.

According to Google, a good LCP score is up to 2.5 seconds.

Between 2.5 seconds and 4.0 seconds, Google will consider that the analyzed site or page needs improvement.

To be more precise, the LCP measures the perceived loading speed, i.e. how long it takes before a page displays the first important elements for the user.

This metric does not measure the full page load speed.

FID (first input delay) – measures the “responsiveness” of a page.

Specifically, Google’s algorithms will look at the time between when a user first interacts with a page (when they click on a link or button) and when the browser is able to respond to that interaction.

Google Core Web Vitals for FID recommends a score of less than 100 milliseconds.

Between 100 ms and 300 ms, the site will need improvement to meet the new standards imposed by Google.

CLS (cumulative layout shift) – measures the visual stability and frequency with which users experience unexpected changes in the visual appearance of pages on the site.

Google considers a visual shift to occur each time an element on a web page unexpectedly changes position.

This is the hardest part of Core Web Vitals, because according to Google, websites must score 0.1 to meet the new standards.

Google and user experience

Google aims to provide the best possible user experience for users of its search engine, and in order to do this, it inevitably has to force site owners to follow ‘best’ practices.

You may like it or not, but Google is shaping the internet, and if tomorrow Google suggests that all websites should load in X seconds when accessed from mobile devices with 3G connections, all websites will have to adapt.

What is on-page experience in Google’s vision?

Page experience is a set of signals measured by Google to see if a website’s pages offer a good experience when a user visits that site.

All of the following signals are taken into account by Google to measure a “good page experience” in organic results:

• • Mobile friendliness: pages optimized for browsing on mobile devices.
• • Safe-browsing: site pages do not host malicious (malware) or deceptive (phishing) content.
• • HTTPS security: site pages are served to visitors in a secure version with SSL certificate.
• • Core Web Vitals: the pages of the website offer an excellent user experience, focusing on aspects such as: loading speed, interactivity and visual stability.

If the first three parameters may already sound familiar to you, because they already represent the conditions for effective site optimization in Google, Core Web Vitals is announced to be the next step that Google plans to introduce in the process of SEO optimization, to define the navigation experience offered by the pages of a site to users.

What is the impact of Core Web Vitals on SEO?

First, Google does not yet use Core Web Vitals in its search engine algorithms.

All of the signals presented above will become an official ranking factor for organic results from May 2021 and will currently only apply to searches made on mobile devices.

Google will continue to emphasize the most relevant content at the top of organic results, even indicating that pages that provide the best information will rank higher, even if they have some issues with the metrics analyzed by Core Web Vitals.

For the time being, content quality and number of backlinks take precedence when it comes to a user’s experience on a page within a website.

However, in cases where pages are similar in terms of content relevance, Google will display the pages with the best experience first.

This means that Google will give all sites time to meet the new SEO and web development standards, and Core Web Vitals will become increasingly important in the future.

Tools to measure Core Web Vitals metrics and page experience:

Not sure if your website meets Google’s new standards? No problem. There are enough dedicated analysis tools on the market, such as:

• • Mobile Friendly Test
• • Page speed insight
• • Safe-browsing
• • HTTPS: Open the site or a page of the site with Google Chrome browser and if you see a check next to the URL, it means that the site is in HTTPS.

In terms of Core Web Vitals metrics, you can use the following tools for a detailed analysis and recommendations to fix the issues your site is experiencing:

Google Core Web Vitals measurement tools

And let’s not forget that Core Web Vital site performance is also present in Search Console:

This report offered in Google Search Console shows you which groups of pages on your site need special attention, based on actual CrUX data.

How can I improve the value of Core Web Vitals metrics?

In order to improve the Core Web Vitals metrics, it is necessary to adopt a number of technical practices to optimize the performance of your website. Each of the three core metrics (LCP, FID/INP and CLS) requires specific attention and strategies. Here’s how you can address each of these metrics to provide a better user experience and improve search engine rankings.

1. Improving LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

LCP measures how quickly the largest item on your page is loaded and displayed. To optimize LCP, there are several essential techniques:

• • Optimize Images: Images are often the largest element on a page, so it’s crucial to use modern, efficient formats such as WebP, which offer superior compression without losing visual quality. In addition, use “lazy loading” techniques to load images only when they are needed (i.e. when they become visible to the user), thus reducing the initial loading time.
• • Efficient caching: Implementing an efficient caching system, either server-side or using a CDN (Content Delivery Network), can significantly reduce the time required to load static resources. A CDN will distribute your content across a global network of servers, ensuring fast delivery to users regardless of their geographic location.
• • Minimize resources that block loading: Elements such as CSS and JavaScript can slow down the page rendering process. It’s important to minimize and compact these files by eliminating unnecessary code and using optimization techniques such as “async” or “defer” for scripts so that they don’t block the main page from loading.

2. Reducing FID (First Input Delay) and INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

FID measures the response time to the first user interaction, and INP, a newer metric, will measure the total response time to interactions. Reducing these values involves optimizing interaction code, especially JavaScript:

• • Optimize and clean JavaScript code: JavaScript can be responsible for delays in user interactions. Check for and remove scripts that are unnecessary or do not provide immediate value to the user. In addition, use techniques such as code splitting to load only necessary scripts in certain sections of the page.
• • Implement “lazy loading” for non-critical resources: Make sure that resources that are not immediately necessary, such as images or sections of content further down the page, are only loaded when the user views them. This not only improves initial loading speed, but also reduces bottlenecks during interactions.
• • Reducing blocking interactions: Blocking interactions occur when a script takes too long to respond to a user action, such as clicking or typing. It’s important to avoid computationally intensive processes when interacting with the user and break these tasks into smaller chunks that can be processed quickly.

3. Reducing CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

CLS refers to the visual stability of the page and measures how much the elements move during loading. High CLS can lead to a frustrating user experience, so reducing it is essential:

• • Set the sizes of visual elements: One of the most common causes of a high CLS is the lack of defined sizes for images, videos and other media elements. Make sure that all these elements have sizes specified in the HTML code, so that the browser can reserve the necessary space from the start, preventing elements from moving abruptly during loading.
• • Avoid late content insertions: Dynamic content, such as advertisements or pop-ups, can be added late, causing unpleasant shifts in the layout. It is important to reserve space for these elements during the initial load time or to load them in a way that does not influence the page structure.
• • Optimize fonts and the use of third-party scripts: Custom fonts can cause changes in page layout if not optimized correctly. Be sure to use techniques such as “font-display: swap” to avoid sudden font changes. Also minimize the use of third-party scripts that can cause visual changes or rendering delays.

However, improving the user experience on a page within a website is quite a complex subject and requires technical knowledge to get the results required by Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics. So you can call an SEO agency that can help you optimize your site in terms of loading speed.

Keep in mind that Google will increasingly focus on user experience and in the long term, these ranking factors will become much more important in SEO.