Wondering why your website still struggles to rank well? You might have already conducted in-depth keyword research and explored backlinking opportunities, but that’s just part of the equation.
In May 2021, Google introduced a critical update that added Core Web Vitals as a key ranking factor. These metrics are designed to assess the quality of user experience on your site. Now, on-page experience plays a crucial role in determining where your website appears on the SERPs.
But what are Core Web Vitals, and why should you care?
Imagine this: you have a blog rich with organic keywords and high-quality backlinks. Everything seems on track, but when users visit your site, it loads slowly. This is a red flag for Google. As user expectations evolve, page speed and smooth performance have become critical. Every extra second your site takes to load can hurt both user satisfaction and your rankings.
A slow-loading site frustrates users and signals to Google that your website may not be offering the best experience. In today’s digital landscape, where importance of user experience in SEO is paramount, even a well-optimized site with strong content and backlinks can fall short if it doesn’t meet performance standards.
That’s why understanding how to improve the Core Web Vitals for your WordPress website is essential if you want to stay competitive and enhance your website’s rankings.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a set of specific metrics introduced by Google to quantify the quality of user experience on your website, this is the simplest core web vitals definition that you can find on the internet.
These metrics focus on three key areas that directly impact how users perceive the website performance rating of a webpage:
- Loading Speed – How quickly the main content of the page is visible.
- Interactivity – How responsive the page is to user actions, such as clicks and taps.
- Visual Stability – How stable the visual elements are while the page is loading, avoiding unexpected shifts in layout.
Google measure core web vitals through three primary metrics:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric gauges loading performance, tracking the time it takes for the largest visible element (such as an image or block of text) to appear on the screen.
- First Input Delay (FID): This measures interactivity, tracking the delay between a user’s first interaction (like a click or tap) and the browser’s response to it.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): This evaluates visual stability, measuring any unexpected shifts of visual elements as the page loads.
To understand how well your site performs in these areas, you can run a Core Web Vitals test using tools like Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, or Lighthouse. These core web vitals testing tools provide detailed insights into each metric, helping you identify and address performance issues.
Optimizing these metrics not only improves user experience but also enhances your site’s search rankings.
Keep reading if you want to know how to check core web vitals and why they are important in Technical SEO of your WordPress website.
How to Access Google Web Vitals in Search Console
To check how your site performs in terms of Core Web Vitals, follow these steps:
- Log in to Google Search Console: Visit Google Search Console and sign in with your Google account.
- Select Your Property: Choose the website property for which you want to check Core Web Vitals in the search console from the list of properties you manage.
- Navigate to Core Web Vitals: In the left-hand menu, click on “Core Web Vitals” under the “Experience” section. This will take you to the Core Web Vitals report.
- View Report Overview: The report will display an overview of how your pages perform based on LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (First Input Delay), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). You will see performance grouped by mobile and desktop.
- Analyze Details: Click on each metric (LCP, FID, CLS) provided in the core web vitals report to view detailed data and specific URLs with poor scores. This helps you pinpoint which pages need improvement.
- Download Data: If needed, you can download the data for further analysis by clicking the “Export” button.
Why Core Web Vitals Test Matter for Your Website
Optimizing your Google Web Vitals can significantly improve both user experience and search engine rankings. Let’s explore the benefits of optimizing technical SEO core web vitals issues and the risks of neglecting these metrics.
Positive Implications
- Better User Experience: A well-optimized site loads quickly, responds smoothly, and maintains visual stability, resulting in higher user satisfaction, more engagement, and lower bounce rates.
- Improved Search Rankings: Since Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, meeting performance standards can lead to better SERP positions, increasing organic traffic and visibility.
- Higher Conversions: Faster load times and smoother interactions often lead to more conversions, whether it’s a purchase, form submission, or another call to action.
- Competitive Advantage: A site that excels in Core Web Vitals can outshine competitors who fail to prioritize these performance factors.
Negative Implications
- Lower Search Rankings: If your site loads slowly or has poor interactivity, it could rank lower, reducing your organic traffic.
- High Bounce Rates: A frustrating user experience can cause visitors to leave quickly, which signals to Google that your site isn’t valuable.
- Lost User Trust: Visual instability, like shifting images or buttons, makes a site look unprofessional, eroding user trust and leading to fewer conversions.
- Decreased Revenue: For e-commerce sites, poor performance can directly translate into lost sales, as users abandon their shopping carts due to slow load times or clunky interactions.
How To Improve Core Web Vitals: In-Depth Look at Key Metrics
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a key metric in Google’s Core Web Vitals Test that measures loading performance. Specifically, it tracks the time it takes for the largest visible element on a webpage to fully load and become visible to the user. This could be an image, a video, or a block of text that takes up a significant portion of the viewport.
LCP is an important core web vitals ranking factor because it reflects the user’s perception of how quickly a page loads. Ideally, your LCP should occur within the first 2.5 seconds of loading to provide a positive core web vitals page experience. Elements that typically contribute to LCP include:
- Hero Images: The large, prominent images at the top of a webpage.
- Video Thumbnails: Videos that are displayed as a key feature.
- Large Text Blocks: Significant sections of text that are crucial for understanding the page content.
You can also check it using page speed insights.
It’s recommended to test LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) through Google Search Console core web vitals rather than PageSpeed Insights. This is because PageSpeed Insights requires you to check each URL individually. In contrast, Google Core Web Vitals test section provides a comprehensive list of URLs with their LCP performance, making it easier to identify which ones have good or poor scores.
Your LCP score might be low, how to fix it?
Here are some ways to improve LCP:
- Optimize and compress images: Use modern formats like WebP and ensure images are appropriately sized for the device.
- Implement lazy loading: Load images only when they come into the viewport to reduce initial load times.
- Improve server response time: Consider using a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to reduce latency and enhance server speed.
- Minimize CSS and JavaScript blocking resources: Defer non-critical scripts and inline critical CSS to speed up rendering.
- Use browser caching: Ensure repeat visitors can load your site faster by caching essential assets.
- Preload important resources: Prioritize loading key elements, such as fonts or hero images, early in the loading sequence.
First Input Delay (FID)
First Input Delay (FID) is a crucial metric in Google Core Web Vitals test that measures the interactivity of your website. It specifically tracks the time from when a user first interacts with a page (like clicking a button or link) to the moment the browser begins processing that interaction. FID is another crucial core web vitals ranking factor because it reflects how quickly your website responds to user actions, which directly influences user satisfaction.
To deliver required core web vitals page experience, your FID should be under 100 milliseconds. A higher FID indicates a delayed response to user interactions, often due to heavy JavaScript execution or the browser being busy with other tasks.
Common causes of poor FID include:
- Large JavaScript files: Unoptimized or excessive JavaScript can block the main thread and slow down response times.
- Third-party scripts: External resources, such as ads or social media embeds, can increase FID by delaying browser processing.
- Main thread work: When the browser is overloaded with tasks, it delays the ability to process user input.
Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals section provides an efficient way to monitor FID across multiple URLs, helping you identify and address any interactivity issues on your site.
Here are some effective ways to improve First Input Delay (FID):
- Optimize and minimize JavaScript: Break down large JavaScript files and remove unused code to reduce the time it takes for the browser to process scripts.
- Use code-splitting: Load only the necessary JavaScript files for the initial page load and defer non-critical scripts until later.
- Defer or asynchronously load JavaScript: This prevents large scripts from blocking the main thread and improves page responsiveness.
- Reduce third-party scripts: Limit the use of third-party services like ads or analytics, as they can significantly impact FID.
- Use browser caching: Caching critical assets can reduce load time for repeat visitors, ensuring faster interactivity.
- Optimize web workers: Use web workers to run JavaScript in the background without blocking the main thread, improving responsiveness.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a key metric in Google Core Web Vitals test that measures visual stability. It tracks how often and by how many elements on a webpage shift unexpectedly during the loading process. A high google search console CLS issue score means that elements like images, buttons, or text are moving around on the screen, which can lead to a frustrating user experience.
Ideally, your CLS score should be below 0.1 to ensure a stable and visually smooth page. High CLS can negatively impact user satisfaction, as unexpected shifts often cause users to click on the wrong elements or lose their place on the page.
Common causes of poor Google Search Console CLS issue include:
- Images without dimensions: If an image is loaded without defined width and height, it can cause layout shifts as the page adjusts.
- Ads, embeds, or iframes without space reserved: These elements can load late and push content down, causing shifts.
- Dynamically injected content: Adding content above the existing content without proper structure leads to layout instability.
Google Core Web Vitals test section helps track and monitor CLS issues across multiple pages, allowing you to identify and fix layout shift problems.
Here are some effective ways to improve Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):
- Specify image dimensions: Always include width and height attributes for images to prevent shifts as the images load.
- Reserve space for ads and embeds: Allocate sufficient space for ads, iframes, and other embedded content to avoid layout shifts when they load.
- Use a fixed size for dynamic content: Ensure that dynamically injected content has predefined space to prevent unexpected shifts.
- Avoid inserting content above existing content: Add new content below existing elements or use placeholders to maintain layout stability.
- Implement font loading strategies: Use font-display CSS property to control how fonts are displayed and avoid shifts due to font loading.
- Optimize CSS animations and transitions: Ensure that animations and transitions do not cause content to shift unexpectedly.
How To Fix Core Web Vitals Issues – The Common Ones
How can I preload a header class image in OceanWP to improve LCP?
If your LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is poor due to a header image in OceanWP, you might be experiencing delays because the image isn’t being prefetched. You can resolve this by following these steps:
Solution:
- Add Preload Link: Add a <link rel=”preload” href=”your-image-url” as=”image”> in the <head> section of your HTML to instruct the browser to preload the image.
- Use Inline Styles: Apply inline CSS to set the image as a background with fixed dimensions in your theme’s custom CSS or within the <style> tags to ensure it’s sized properly and avoids layout shifts.
- Optimize the Image: Ensure the image is optimized for the web (compressed and in modern formats like WebP) to reduce load times.
- Leverage Lazy Loading: For images below the fold, consider lazy loading to prioritize the loading of above-the-fold content.
By implementing these techniques, you can help reduce the load delay of your header image and improve your LCP score.
Why is a small paragraph flagged as the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) element?
Are you facing an issue where a simple 9-word paragraph is being flagged as the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) element during a Google PageSpeed test, despite larger elements being present on the page?
Solution:
- Check Font Loading: Ensure fonts are loaded efficiently by setting font-display: swap in your CSS to prevent text from being invisible while fonts load, which can impact LCP.
- Inline Critical CSS: Inline critical CSS for the above-the-fold content to ensure that essential styles are applied quickly. This helps prevent layout shifts and delays.
- Optimize Initial Render: Review the HTML structure and ensure that critical CSS and JavaScript required for initial rendering are not blocking the page load.
- Use a Font Loading Strategy: Implement font loading strategies like preloading key fonts or using font-display: optional if fonts are not crucial for initial page view.
- Verify Larger Elements: Double-check that larger elements are properly sized and that no CSS or JavaScript errors are causing layout shifts that might misidentify the LCP element.
If you’re facing more complicated issues in your web core vitals, contact a WordPress Development Agency to get it resolved before Google deranks your website.
Conclusion
In today’s competitive digital landscape, optimizing for Core Web Vitals is not just a technical requirement—it’s a strategic advantage. These metrics—Loading Speed (LCP), Interactivity (FID), and Visual Stability (CLS)—are critical in defining both your user experience and your search engine rankings.
Addressing Core Web Vitals involves ongoing technical adjustments, but the benefits are substantial. Websites that perform well not only rank higher but also provide a superior user experience, leading to more conversions and greater success.
So, if your website performance rating is holding you back, it might be time to focus on how to fix Core Web Vitals issues. Your users—and your search rankings—will thank you.
