Core web vitals have become a major search ranking factor, which means that while your content still remains supreme, technical SEO will have more importance. It includes optimizing your site speed and user experience.
Around 21.98% of origins have passed Core Web Vitals by gaining a good Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift score.
In this guide, you will learn about core web vitals and ways to ensure that your website is in line with this algorithm updates and achieve a faster core web vitals score.
Let’s first quickly understand the concept of core web vitals!
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are Google metrics that allow you to understand user experience while surfing your website. It tests the speed, responsiveness, and stability of the page loading experience for users.
There are three that influence page speed and user interaction dimensions:
- Largest contentful paint: It is the time taken by a page to load its main content. The best LCP measure is 2.5 seconds or faster.
- First input delay: It is the time taken by a page to become interactive with users. The best measure is less than 100ms.
- Cumulative layout shift: It is the amount of spontaneous layout shift of visual page content. The best measure is less than 0.1.
Core Web Vitals figure out the issues in user experiences by developing a metric for three primary areas of user experience:
- Page loading performance
- Ease of interaction
- Visual stability of a page
Top 7 Methods To Achieve A Faster Core Web Vital Score
1. Optimize Your Images and Videos
The first is to optimize the images and videos on your pages as these are the largest elements on a web page. You can use the following methods to optimize them:
- Enable WebP. It is a version of image format which is similar to JPEG
- Compress photos
- Use JPG format for landscape images and PNG for graphics
- You can also use next-generation formats, such as JPEG 2000 or JPEG XR
- Host videos through third-party platforms
2. Minify CSS, JS, and HTML Files
Remove unnecessary codes from your web page to improve your site speed. Reducing the size of CS, JS, and HTML files results in lower website load time, improved user experience and Core Web Vitals scores.
Here are ways to minify CSS, JS, and HTML files:
- Remove white spaces, line breaks, and comments
- Remove unused CSS and defer the loading of non-critical JS
- Use caching plugins to eliminate render-blocking CSS
- Add new UI elements below the fold
3. Speed Up Your Server
No doubt, server response time, which is also known as Time to First Byte (TTFB) can affect the Core Web Vital metric.
One of the main factors responsible for server load is your web host. Therefore, it is important to choose a faster web host. You can also upgrade your current hosting plan.
In addition, use CDN, which is a Content Delivery Network. It is helpful when the users that visit your website are spread across the globe. It decreases the distance that your website files need to travel to reach users.
4. Remove Unnecessary Plugins
Using plugins that are badly coded can harm your website's performance. Usually, plugins increase the number of requests when a user visits your website.
Therefore, choose a plugin which is:
- absolutely necessary
- most lightweight
- well-coded
5. Reduce Third-Party Scripts
Another way to optimize your Core Web Vitals is by reducing third-party scripts. Third-party scripts include Google Analytics, social media or ads. These scripts can highly slow down your website performance.
To solve the issue, you can apply the following tips:
- Remove the unnecessary scripts on a few pages
- Self-host the script if the third-party server slows the performance
- Load the script using the async or defer attribute
- Remove the script entirely from your web pages
6. Optimize Your Ad Placement
Poor Web Vital Scores are also the result of types and complexities of ad content on your page. Here is how your ad content can affect Core Web Vital scores:
- Same ad space for ad media of different heights.
- Renewal of ad calls for idle users.
- Stagnation of content load on your page due to heavy ads.
To avoid such problems, you need to optimize your ad placement. Here are top ways to do that:
Always choose the largest available height for an ad and manage the refresh logic accordingly.
Evaluate the CPU usage of the ads.
Implement lazy load ads that are loaded and served in real-time when the user scrolls towards them.
7. Use Effective Tools to Track Your Core Web Vitals
There are several tools to choose from to track your core web vitals. However, the top three tools that you can use are:
- Google Search Console: Google Search Console provides you with a report, showing pages that meet the criteria and are considered ‘good’ by Google. It also shows which pages need improvement.
- Lighthouse: This tool provides you with suggestions on improving the score of your page. It also provides insights into the website’s accessibility and SEO.
- PageSpeed Insights: This tool gives an overview of the critical speed parameters. It provides an option to measure Core Web Vitals score and includes CLS and LCP metrics in their page analysis.
Final Thoughts on getting a Faster Core Web Vitals Score
Google rolled out its page experience update in September 2021, putting site speed and user experience on the top. The Core Web Vitals affect rankings as well as user experience.
Therefore, it is crucial that you strategically monitor and update your website. To make your website Core Web Vitals compliant, optimize and improve your page user experience. Along with the above seven tips, you can also implement modern web capabilities, such as Progressive Web Apps, offline content, dark mode, the Web Share API, and Trusted Web Activities.