Handbook of Knowledge on Core Web Vitals

What Are Google's New Ranking Factors and How Do They Work?

When can you say that the website you run has achieved its expected success? The basic benchmark here will, of course, be growing popularity and increasing sales of services or products through the company portal. In the vast majority of cases, to stand out from the competition, you need to invest in top-class marketing activities. Building websites that are as friendly as possible not only to Google algorithms, but also to users themselves, is an absolute must for any business owner planning to monetize their online presence. From now on, Core Web Vitals are a very important Google ranking factor. Interestingly, following the rules of creating good CWV is a straightforward path to satisfying potential Clients. Why? You will find the answer to this question and other popular issues in our article. Enjoy reading!

"The page experience update is now rolling out to all users globally. It will be complete by the end of August 2021."

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/04/more-details-page-experience

Core Web Vitals - A Major Algorithm Revolution? Not Necessarily!

Learn the Details of Google Page Experience

Before we tell you why Google Page Experience and web vitals should be of particular interest to every business owner, it is worth explaining the definition and the exact content of the algorithm update announced last year. Usually, changes of this type cause quite a stir among business owners or even online marketing specialists. In this case, however, we are talking about factors that have been known and used for a long time. Core Web Vitals, which are by far the most important part of the Google Page Experience update, are nothing more than maintaining high standards of website performance. The user experience - that of potential Clients who browse through the resources of your company portal in detail - has long been considered an essential component of digital marketing. The better designed the portal, the greater the chance of achieving conversions or generating a business inquiry. Core Web Vitals emphasize the need to meet web users' expectations and improve the UX score. So, on the surface, the changes are not huge. However, reality may turn out to be harsh for business owners who have so far avoided the topic of image optimization, website speed acceleration, or fixes in implemented code like the plague. Pay attention to CWV and make the necessary changes.

Here Are Google's New Ranking Factors. Learn More About Core Web Vitals

By far the most important web metric for many years has been page loading speed. It should come as no surprise, then, that this parameter forms the absolute foundation of the latest Google algorithm update. In this case, Core Web Vitals will measure the time needed to load the largest element located on your portal. What will it be? An image file, a video, or even an article published in your news section. The metric designed by Google evaluates website speed on three levels. A score within the range of 2.5 seconds to 4 seconds should be treated as a satisfactory result. Unacceptable - according to the Google algorithm, of course - is loading the most important files in a time exceeding 4 seconds. The LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) score must remain at a high level so that potential Clients do not abandon your virtual walls in frustration. How to check it? Useful tools here include PageSpeed Insights or the external software GTmetrix. You should also turn your attention to the Think with Google service. It lets you verify the speed of your mobile website on 3G or 4G.

While website speed itself is an aspect known to virtually every online marketing specialist or business owner, the topic of corporate portal interactivity, FID, is a somewhat more mysterious Core Web Vitals parameter. Here, the search engine algorithm also measures time, but this time the time needed to process a specific request. We are talking, for instance, about clicking a tab and the response time of the website to such an action. As is usually the case in marketing, fractions of a second determine a good or bad metric. To receive a good FID rating from the algorithm, you need to demonstrate response times to requests shorter than 100 ms. The range of 100 - 300 ms is considered acceptable, but it will certainly require expert intervention. If the Googlebot analysis shows a time exceeding 300 ms, achieving positive ratings and high rankings for selected keywords might be tough. Visit the previously mentioned PageSpeed application or the Google web.dev tool.

Source: https://web.dev/vitals/

The set of metrics brought to life along with the Google Page Ex perience concludes with visual stability of the page (CLS). In order to verify the cumulative layout shift value, you should test your website in PageSpeed Insights. There you will receive concrete numbers straight from Google, but it is worth knowing how the portal's visual stability works and how it is evaluated by the algorithm. Artificial intelligence pays special attention to any shifts and irregularities that occur during the initial loading of the page. According to Google, this aspect can cause users to leave the address faster, so it is worth making sure that the portal you run displays perfectly on every device. The CLS score follows rigidly defined standards ranging from zero to one. A result below 0.1 means a perfectly functioning company website. When will it be otherwise? Values ranging from 0.1 to 0.25 or anything above 0.25 on the Google scale are a clear signal that a given website requires immediate intervention from specialists. After all, huge amounts of money and the growing interest of potential Clients are at stake. Are you sure you want to lose all this due to poor results achieved in CLS tests?

Source: https://web.dev/vitals/

Additional web metrics allow you to enhance the power of Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are important for providing an excellent user experience, but there are also other key factors, good examples of which are TTFB (Time to First Byte), FCP (First Contentful Paint), TBT (Total Blocking Time), or TTI (Time to Interactive). They serve as proxy metrics or simply complementary metrics to the core web vitals to help capture an even more accurate part of the experience of the internet user, your potential business Client.

Source: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/images/page-experience-signal.jpeg

Proven tools for measuring key web vitals

According to Google specialists, Core Web Vitals are of great importance for all web experiences. To this end, Google tries to display key data in almost all of its most popular tools. They can be divided into lab and field tools. The difference between them is that field tools are responsible for collecting data from real users, while lab tools are tested based on identical conditions, and the results usually turn out to be similar to each other or repeatable.

The Chrome User Experience Report works perfectly as a field tool. The program collects anonymous measurement data from a real web user, where the data allows website owners to quickly evaluate their effectiveness without the need for manual data analysis. List of popular field tools:

• Chrome User Experience Report
• Google Search Console
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• web.dev
• Web Vitals Extension
• Web-vitals JavaScript library

List of lab tools recommended by specialists:

• Chrome DevTools
• Lighthouse
• Google PageSpeed Insights
• web.dev

Lab measurements are an extremely important part of the web user experience, but they do not replace field tools, as only in-the-field measurement can capture a much more complete picture of statistics and the experiences of your website's real users.

John Mueller explains how to factor in Core Web Vitals and how to use Search Console to improve website parameters.

The widely discussed Google Page Experience update and the incoming Core Web Vitals factors are actually aspects that you should have been paying attention to for many years. A fast and smoothly functioning company website only encourages people to explore the offer or place an order. Take an interest in this topic. Especially since you have basic analytical tools right at your fingertips. Did you get a result that falls outside the frames defined by Google? Ask specialists for help. Neglecting Core Web Vitals can lead to a tragic outcome. Complying with them? A straightforward path to achieving your dream rankings.

Łukasz Buławski - SEO specialist at the agency AFTERWEB. Organizer of the meet.js Wrocław event - a meetup for developers, and a former mentor at CodersCamp - an open web development course. On a daily basis, he explores uncharted SEO territory and develops his front-end skills. In his free time, he dedicates himself to esports and game design.