SEO and Core Web Vitals: Optimizing Performance for Rankings

Are you doing everything for your web page, but it isn’t ranking? You have done all the necessary keyword optimization, worked on responsiveness, and focused on creating quality backlinks, but somehow, something is lacking. The problem might be unoptimized core web vitals. 

Today, Google emphasizes on-page optimization a lot. This is exactly where CWVs (Core Web Vitals) come into play. In simple terms, CWVs are signals that analyze a website’s user experience, such as reaction time to interactions, visual stability, and load performance. They impact SEO performance more than you think!

So, in this blog, we will walk you through the fundamentals of core web vitals, their importance for SEO, and how to optimize them for ranking on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). So, without further ado, let’s dive right in! 

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core web vitals, or CWVs, are nothing but a set of factors that determine the UX quality when a visitor visits a web page. And what exactly are those specific factors? They are:

• LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): It is a measurement of your web page’s load performance. Simply, it defines the time it takes for the largest component on your web page to load, making the render complete.
• INP (Interaction to Next Paint): INP measures the responsiveness of a web page when a visitor interacts with it by clicking on a button, playing a video, or filling out a form.
• CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): This metric measures the visual stability of the web page. For instance, how the layout shifts when someone interacts with the page.

Optimizing your web pages for these can have a massive impact on the SEO rankings, leading to your business growth.

Why are Core Web Vitals Important for SEO?

How do CWVs impact SEO rankings? For that, you have to understand the fact that Google and other SERPs give utmost priority to user experience as they encourage the visitors to stay on the web page longer which in turn, encourages interaction while increasing the possibility of a return visit.

Apart from these metrics, Google also considers other factors:

• Mobile responsiveness
• Absence of misleading or malicious content
• Usage of HTTPS

However, these are the consequences of a weak core web vitals score:

• Lower search rankings due to poor UX that signals SERPs not to rank the page.
• A sluggish and non-responsive web page that affects the user experience and increases the bounce rate.
• A high bounce rate that impacts customer retention, attraction, and business reputation negatively.

But, how to check the core web vitals of your web page?

To check the CWVs of your website or web page, all you need is GSC (Google Search Console). Apart from the GSC, there are other tools as well. Let’s look at them briefly:

• CrUX or Chrome User Experience Report is a tool that allows you to monitor UX information based on CWV indicators. These data are generally from users who voluntarily report their browsing history and usage statistics.
• PageSpeed Insights leverages CrUX data to assess areas on a web page that need improvement and make suggestions.
• Lighthouse is an assessment tool that allows developers to use lab data to identify issues and mitigate them.

Now that we know about the way core web vitals impact SEO. Let’s look at the strategies implemented by SEO experts to improve core web vitals. 

How to Optimize Core Web Vitals?

It’s time for us to discuss core web vitals optimization strategies. Although there are many techniques to optimize CWVs, we will highlight the top 5 strategies. This will give you a comprehensive idea about which factors to prioritize during optimization.

Image Optimization

Regarding LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), the image is the biggest page element and is a determining one of a particular web page. Image optimization includes:

• Right Formats: You can restore images into formats like WebP, ensuring better data density. 
• Compressed Images: Prioritizing image compression (decreasing their weight) while maintaining the image quality can be a game changer for optimizing LCP.
• Lazy Loading: Page load speed is a determining factor for user experience. So, you can implement lazy loading, so that the images load only when the visitors view it can make all the difference to web page load speed.

Usage of Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN or Content Delivery Network is a distributed server network that delivers user content with minimal delay, enhancing the speed and performance of web pages. As it places servers nearer to the users, the data travel distance reduces, guaranteeing faster load speed. CDN helps in:

• Faster Delivery: CDN ensures faster delivery of content to the users, improving the Largest Contentful Paint.
• Reduction in Server Load: With reduced traffic through CDN, the server load gets substantially reduced due to fewer requests, resulting in optimized INP.

Optimization of Caching

Caching is a computing technique where the frequently accessed data is stored in a temporary location (cache), enabling faster data retrieval for repeated requests. This eliminates the need to download data each time a web page loads, which eliminates the sluggishness of a web page. The two types of caching are:

• Browser Caching: This is using programs and policies to cache resources locally.
• Server Caching: Server caching is done through technologies like Memcached and Redis, reducing the server processing time and boosting INP and LCP.

Improving Response Time of Servers

A delayed response time affects the overall responsiveness of the web page. In turn, it slows down the web page’s other loading processes, leading to poor user experience. This can be improved by:

• The Usage of a Reliable Hosting Service: You have to opt for a hosting provider that allows a fast and stable internet connection.
• Database Queries Optimization: Ensure that the database tunes to data access in minimal time.
• Server Load: You can even upgrade the server to maintain high traffic by load balancing.

Focus More on Visible Content

Prioritize above-the-fold content and include the important information in that section. This speeds LCP, enabling faster loading. This can be done through:

• Usage of Lazy Loading: Enable lazy loading for the elements that are not at the top of the web page.
• Render Critical Path: Prioritize resource loading for the most appealing part of the page that requires user interaction.

Wrapping Up

Search engine optimization and core web vitals are interrelated concepts. Ignoring these Google ranking factors can significantly impact web page performance, affecting your business’s overall competitiveness.

Prioritizing CWVs (Core Web Vitals) metrics is paramount for businesses looking to grow their online presence. This not only helps in website performance optimization but also attracts clients and retains customers.

It doesn’t matter which industry your business falls under; addressing your core web vitals score can enhance user experience and improve overall SEO outcomes.