New official and all important ranking factors are just about here; Google’s Core Web Vitals; a set of specific factors designed to measure how users experience the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of a page.
Core Web Vitals will become key ranking signals from May 2021, in an update that will also combine existing UX-related signals.
It appears these updates from Google will become a serious ranking factor in the coming months, impacting all sites and users, therefore it’s now more important than ever to test and measure your website performance and implement optimizations to remain ahead of the curve.
What exactly are core web vitals?
Core Web Vitals are made up of three specific page speed and user interaction measurements: largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift.
Specifically, these three signals are defined in more detail below:
- Largest Contentful Paint: The time it takes for a page’s main content to load. An ideal LCP measurement is 2.5 seconds or faster.
- First Input Delay: The time it takes for a page to become interactive. An ideal measurement is less than 100 ms.
- Cumulative Layout Shift: The amount of unexpected layout shift of visual page content. An ideal measurement is less than 0.1.
As you can tell, the focus is predominantly on technical factors. It’s also important to note that Core Web Vitals are a subset of factors that will be part of Google’s “page experience” score.
The ‘page experience’ signal combines Core Web Vitals with the following signals:
- Mobile-friendliness
- Safe-browsing
- HTTPS-security
- Intrusive interstitial guidelines
With Core Web Vitals being a super important part of that score.
How is it going to affect ranking
Core Web Vitals and SEO go hand-in-hand, and we know that we can’t ignore ranking factors if we want to beat competition and maintain rankings.
Judging by announcements and the name itself, it’s fair to say that core web vitals will make up a significant portion of your page experience score and thus SEO performance.
How to give your website the best possible chance of success
Tracking your Core Vitals can be done via your Google Search Console account and reviewing each web property on a case-to-case basis. If you have URLs that are poor or needs improvement, that’s when you want to investigate and find out what’s wrong and how you can improve those pages.
A proficient digital marketing agency like Redline can assist you review and implement some wins for your website, in a timely manner. Contact the friendly team at Redline Digital today.