Core Web Vitals: Transform Your Site for Google’s New Ranking Factor

Google recently announced that “Core Web Vitals” will be incorporated as a Google ranking signal. This set of specific factors will change the way the user’s experience affects your ranking. Although the update will be launched in 2021, these metrics are already being used to measure the quality of a webpage and user’s experience. Core Web Vitals are focused on page loading, interactivity, and visual stability. This upcoming change to search rankings will evaluate the overall user experience provided by a page. Once the update takes place, pages that fail to provide a good user experience will rank lower in the search results. However, if you know how to update your site for Core Web Vitals, you can use this to your advantage. For website owners and managers, this update means that you can boost your SEO by working with the right web designer.

An Overview Of Core Web Vitals

There are 3 specific measurements that make up the Core Web Vitals.

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – Page Loading

Defined as the time interval between the start of a page-load to when the largest image or text block in a user’s viewport is fully rendered, this important user experience factor is what makes a webpage be perceived as slow or fast by the users. LCP is the measurement of how long it takes for the main content to be ready. If you have ever experienced a delay in an image or a text loading, you know how frustrating this can be.

2. First Input Delay (FID) – Interactivity

This measures the time of the user’s interactivity and how long the page is ready to respond to clicks, scrolls, or other actions. This is an important factor that can greatly affect the way a user perceives your website. When you click on a link or a button, you expect it to work right away, otherwise, it will seem broken. In many cases, long loading times can lead people to leave your website.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – Visual Stability

This refers to the unexpected shifting of page elements when the page is still loading. It is probably the most annoying and common problem that you will ever find in a website. Whenever a website is still loading you will see how some elements like buttons or text boxes move around the screen and sometimes disappear. This is especially inconvenient when the webpage takes a long time to load completely. Sometimes it might seem like the page is ready to interact and when you’re about to click on something, it moves.

How A Web Designer Can Help You Boost Your SEO?

If you oversimplify the new ranking factors, you just need to make elements load faster. However, for LCP, FID and CLS to be correctly addressed and optimized you need a lot of technical knowledge–it’s not as simple as resizing images and editing a few lines of code.  For this reason alone is that a web designer can now be one of your biggest allies when it comes to optimizing your webpage for SEO.  When building a new website or redesigning an existing one, working with a web designer that is able to update the site for Core Web Vitals is important. Of course, these are not the only ranking factors and SEO takes more than just that, but if you want to take full advantage of this upcoming update and get an edge over your competitors, this is the right time. —- S-FX.com Small Business Solutions is a boutique web design and technology consulting agency geared towards start-up businesses, small businesses and non-profit businesses.  We specialize in implementing low cost technology solutions to maximize efficiency and reduce business operating costs. Discover how to elevate your business getting the right tools and services!