If you haven’t seen my last video defining Google’s Core Web Vitals definitely check that one out here to gain a general understanding of these metrics.
Why are Core Web Vitals Important for your website?
If you’re focused on SEO then you should be focused on Core Web Vitals.
The long and short of it is that they’re optimizations and optimizations are important to your SEO. While optimizing your site to meet your goals is always important for a properly functioning, well organized website, Core Web Vitals are Google’s key indicators of a good or bad site.
These are the top three things to look for:
1 – Largest Contentful Paint
This metric measures how long it takes your content to load. The time period when you have your user’s attention and they click to head to your site is critical. It’s the user’s first impression of your business or organization, so it better be a good one. If your site takes too long to load you will struggle to keep your user’s attention and could lose them! You are likely to see an increased bounce rate because they’re getting frustrated and leaving.
2 – First Input Delay
Every second matters when you want a user to take action on your site. First input delay is the measure of how long a user is not able to interact with parts of your site while it loads. Trouble taking an action can cause frustration and confusion for your user and it’s likely they will lose interest and leave.
3 – Cumulative Layout Shift
Lastly, this one might be the most frustrating customer experience. Cumulative Layout Shift is when items move and shift as they are loading. Not only does this mean that your site has a long load time, and that items won’t be interactive, if you TRY to interact users will likely click something unintentionally. So if there are CLS errors on your site, it is very important to tackle them ASAP.
How do Core Web Vitals Affect SEO?
The jury is still out on how exactly your Core Web Vitals will affect your ranking results on Google – but because these metrics are made by google they could start weighing them more heavily at any time.
SEO is multifaceted, and there is no one single solution to get you on the 1st page of Google. These are just 3 of hundreds of total ranking factors that Google weighs to display search results for any given query. Focusing on Core Web Vitals without also focusing on keyword research and working on growing your organic search traffic is not going to get you ranked.
Working on creating high quality, relevant content, with thoughtful and properly coded headings first. Expanding related keywords with new content is a great next step. Keep an eye on search queries you’re ranking for, and how folks are finding you. That paired with working on optimizing your site to help improve these Core Web Vitals is going to improve overall ranking results!
If you’re focusing on website performance and need any help please get in touch! ❤️ Here’s a link to our calendar, let’s find a time to chat!
Interested in Learning More About Core Web Vitals?
Check out our other videos on this topic!
