What is Core Web Vital and Its Impact on SEO
Google has become one of the top search engines until now. Any changes made by Google will certainly make all website owners immediately improve and seek new formulas so that they can be at the top of the search engine rankings.
Including last year, in 2020, Google announced that they are using a new ranking factor. This ranking factor is called page experience. This factor will be measured by a number of indicators named core web vitals.
As a website owner, you must study various things related to core web vitals, so that search engine results can be maintained or improved.
What are Core Web Vitals
So, what are core web vitals? Core web vitals are a set of metrics determined by Google. These metrics are set as their latest ranking indicators.
With core web vitals, website owners have 3 clear aspects to manage the effectiveness of the web pages they have. These aspects are loading speed, website element response, and layout stability.
Google itself states that the possibility of visitors leaving a website can decrease by up to 24 percent if website owners can optimize the above aspects. Not only that, core web vitals will also affect SEO.
Core Web Vitals Elements
As mentioned earlier, core web vitals are closely related to 3 elements. Here are some elements of core web vitals, including:
LCP
LCP stands for Largest Contentful Paint, LCP is closely related to website speed. LCP includes not only videos and images, but also long texts can be considered as LCP.
You should remember that this factor only considers large content on the accessed page. Therefore, other elements below are not included, even if they are large in size.
LCP is intentionally implemented to replace the previously used metric, FCP or First Contentful Paint. As the name suggests, FCP is the first content loaded on a page such as logos and navigation menus.
To reduce LCP, here are some things that can be done, including:
Optimizing large-sized files by compressing files or images. You can also use the last load plugin.
Making CSS and JavaScript files much more efficient. This can be done by improving rendering or reducing file size.
Improving website loading speed.
Fixing rendering issues in the browser.
FID
FID stands for First Input Delay, FID is closely related to the website's response to its visitors. Although FID is measured from visitor interactions after the elements are loaded, this indicator is not complete.
Google also still uses lab data to determine research criteria. However, the first interaction on a web page can occur at any time. Your website's FID can deteriorate if visitors do not click on certain menus or buttons on the website.
To improve the FID score, you need to speed up website loading. However, not in terms of images, but in optimizing JavaScript. This programming language can be used to make web pages more dynamic. But if more files are used on a page, the process running when the page is loaded will become heavier.
CLS
CLS or Cumulative Layout Shift is closely related to page layout stability. An example of poor CLS is when you open a blog and start reading it, but suddenly the article you are reading shifts down and an ad banner appears.
Although this may sound trivial, it can be very annoying when you are reading. The quality of CLS can be measured by such occurrences. However, CLS only measures how often layout changes occur.
What about CLS? For CLS, you can use lazy load plugins to handle delayed ad loading. Not only that, you also need to ensure the size and position of images using JavaScript code.
If the layout and size are not suitable, changes must be made until the CLS score is good enough for website optimization.
Checking Core Web Vitals
Now, there are tools that display core web vitals such as Chrome Web Vitals Extensions, Chrome UX Report, Google Search Console, and PageSpeed Insight. However, you do not need to use all these tools simultaneously.
You can use PageSpeed Insight and Google Search Console. In Google Search Console, you will see core web vitals data in general. Meanwhile, PageSpeed Insight will help identify elements that need to be optimized from core web vitals.
Checking this in Google Search Console is very easy. You can access the Google Search Console Dashboard, then click on core web vitals. This menu will take you to the dashboard. Checking core web vitals can be done by accessing the site and typing in the website page to be checked.
On the results page, you will find a section titled Field Data. From here, you can see the scores of the three core web vitals indicators plus FCP.
Impact of Web Vitals on SEO
Core web vitals are indeed a ranking factor for Google search pages. However, you still need to pay attention to various other factors that will affect your website's position. Core web vitals indicators are used as assessments when Google finds a website that is perfect in terms of SEO.
For example, if you want to create content but your competitor's content is ranked first, with complete and well-structured content, and strong SEO indicators.
If you find yourself in a situation like this, you need to look at the LCP, FID, and CLS scores. Make sure these scores are higher than your competitor's. This applies not only when creating new content but also when optimizing old content.
Therefore, core web vitals can be considered an SEO indicator, but you must also pay attention to the quality of content and its relevance to visitor preferences.
Optimize Core Web Vitals with WEBARQ
Although you know how to optimize core web vitals, for those who are inexperienced, it may not be that easy. Instead of wasting your time optimizing core web vitals, which may not guarantee success, you can leave this matter to WEBARQ.
WEBARQ is a digital agency specializing in digital marketing. With over 10 years of experience in website optimization, content, and security, WEBARQ has been trusted by several large companies to manage their websites.
So, leave the core web vitals issue to WEBARQ, and let us handle it for you. With WEBARQ, website optimization can be as easy as that.
