What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals – Way back in May 2020, Google announced its intentions to start phasing in a new ranking factor as part of its page experience called Core Web Vitals (CWV). The main objective was to ensure that the ranking of websites and web pages provided a great user experience.
Page experience is a quality rating for a page, and it considers various factors such as speed, performance, security, and the content of the web page. Google uses algorithms that constantly monitor these pages to determine if they have a good user experience or not.
If your website has an excellent overall user experience (UX), there’s a higher chance of ranking well in Google.
Metrics that make up Core Web Vitals (CWV)
These three metrics measure loading performance, interactivity and visual stability:
– Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
– First Input Delay (FID)
– Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Please note that these metrics are per page, not per website. So, you could find several pages having a good score while others need improvement. You can read more about it here.
Will Core Web Vitals affect your rankings?
One of the main characteristics of Core Web Vitals is that your website will need to have a good user experience and high-quality content for you to benefit from these changes, so yes it will.
Many SEOs were unsure if they should act or not. If your current website already provides a great user experience in line with LCP, FID and CLS above, you most likely won’t see any negative impact on your site rankings.
Google Page Experience Was Fully Rolled Out by September 2021
CWV has received numerous updates in 2021 that have made metrics fairer and more accurate, meaning that your website will be judged on how well it performs for users.
If your site doesn’t meet their standards, you could lose rankings in search results. This is a big deal for businesses trying to get ahead of the competition and drive more traffic to their sites.
You can use this guide to make informed decisions about what steps are necessary to improve the SEO performance of your site.
If you need professional help with your SEO we can assist, please get in touch.