Core Web Vitals: A Year On

The year 2020 saw the introduction of Core Web Vitals. In the two years since Google rolled out this ranking signal, there has been a lot of chatter among SEO circles. What type of impact have these Core Web Vitals caused? How much emphasis needs to be placed on them in marketing efforts? Why did Google make the unusual decision to supply ample time to prepare for this change?

Now it’s 2022, the SEO world has gained a clearer picture about Core Web Vitals. Back when we first reported on this algorithm update, we noted it was going to be important due to Google letting everyone know about it months in advance. However, it has been over the last 12 months where we have discovered just how much it altered the search engine results page (SERP) landscape.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

Have you only just heard about Core Web Vitals and don’t know where to begin? If so, let us take a step back. Core Web Vitals, in general, are a set of page experience factors that are deemed important by Google. When first released, these factors covered:

• Mobile-friendly experience
• Safe browsing
• No intrusive interstitials (pop-ups)
• HTTPS-security

The intention behind these Core Web Vitals was simple: to improve the user experience when browsing websites. As a result, Google didn’t just include these in SERP rankings – they made them a priority in the search signal sphere.

These 4 initial page experience signals were only the start. In November 2020, Google announced another set of signals would by joining the Core Web Vitals party. Once the July 2021 core update was completed, the following additions were made:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)The largest contentful paint is a measure of the render time taken for the largest visible contentful area of a page to load.
• First Input Delay (FID)First Input Delay measures the time between the user's initial input and when they see the result of that action on screen.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is a Google Core Web Vitals performance issue that can be detected by Google PageSpeed Insights.

More on those later.

The impact of each Core Web Vital is dependent on various elements. However, it’s important for each website to try and achieve a ‘passing’ grade in every department. Fail to do this for your site, and there is the risk that Google’s algorithm will decide other pages deserve to go above it – plummeting your organic search visibility as a result.

It’s always worth researching as much as you can, make sure to download our free Web Core Vitals: Your Complete Guide eBook to answer any questions you might have.

Core Web Vitals: 2022 Landscape

In June 2021, Google made its biggest update to the Core Web Vitals. This is because it introduced the 3 main elements – or vitals – of this ranking signal: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

Here’s a quick breakdown of each one:

Largest Contentful Paint

Long before Core Web Vitals was a thing, Largest Contentful Paint has been an important aspect of any SEO campaign. Why? Because LCP is used to judge the speed at which a webpage loads from a user’s point of view.

With that said, LCP functions in a different way than other page speed measurements like First Contextual Paint and TTFB. Those metrics don’t necessarily represent the experience of what it’s like (from the POV of a user) to open a webpage.

LCP, on the other hand, focuses on what matters: the time it takes for users to see the page and begin to interact with it.

To achieve a “good” score for this metric, your site needs to achieve an LCP in 2.5 seconds or less.

First Input Delay

First Input Delay is effectively an extension of the aforementioned LCP. While LCP is about how fast a webpage loads all of its elements, FID measures how long it takes for a user to start interacting with the page.

As for what constitutes as an interaction, examples include:

• Selecting a menu option
• Entering information (name, email, address, etc.) into a field
• Clicking on a link present within the website’s navigation
• On mobile devices, extending “accordion text” to uncover hidden information

When it comes to 100% content pages – think news articles and blog posts – FID doesn’t play a significant role. However, for sign-up pages, login pages, and those that require quick clicks from users, FID moves to the forefront of importance.

An FID of 0.1 seconds or less is required to gain a “good” score for this metric.

Cumulative Layout Shift

Cumulative Layout Shift is used to judge the stability of a webpage as it loads. This is why you’ll also see CLS being referred to as “visual stability”. Simply put, if you have a page where elements dance around as the page loads, this results in high CLS – not good.

The desire is to have a webpage load up with the page elements remaining stable. Google’s desire for strong CLS is because they don’t want users clicking on a link by mistake, or having to re-learn the position of fields, images, and text as it moves across the page before it’s fully loaded.

0.1 seconds is regarded as a “good” score for CLS.

The June 2021 update wasn’t done in one swift motion, either. It was gradually rolled out from mid-June all the way to August 2021. The time taken suggests Google were paying particular care and attention with this update, which in turn indicates the long-term importance of Core Web Vitals.

For the rest of the year, it was all quiet on the Core Web Vitals front while everyone adjusted and measured the impact of the changes. The next update began to be rolled out in February 2022. This update took the Core Web Vitals and introduced them to desktop search results.

Before this update, the Core Web Vitals only affected mobile search results. This also suggests why (before the update was rolled out) more domains out of the top 100 in the United States performed better on mobile than desktop. This is despite the fact mobile is notoriously more complex to alter and adjust for performance metrics.

Industry Response to the Changes

Are Core Web Vitals just a fad? Are they only a minor component among the many other ranking signals? Should you even care about them? Depending on what you have read on other blogs, you may have a skewed perception about Core Web Vitals.

In an attempt to establish the feelings on the introduction of Core Web Vitals in the industry, we have gathered a number of responses from SEO experts about this Google update. This includes what they have done to deal with Core Web Vitals, the challenges faced, and how it linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages. to SEO.

Industry leader Neil Patel had this to say when Core Web Vitals were being rolled out:

Is this simply another scare tactic by Google to make us revamp everything and get all nervous for a few months? I don’t think it is. I think this will become a serious ranking factor in the coming years — and for a good reason.

Talking about the update in February 2022, Ahrefs’ Patrick Stox shared his informed opinion:

I don’t expect much, if any, improvement in rankings from improving Core Web Vitals. Still, they are a factor… If a site is already working on Core Web Vitals, it likely has done a lot of other things right as well.

However, Tom Capper, senior search scientist at Moz, is a lot more apprehensive. Commenting on the fact that site owners have been slow to make changes for the update, he had this to say at the end of 2021:

Although it received a lackluster response, don’t expect Core Web Vitals to go quietly into the night. Heading into 2022, we can expect Google to ramp up its importance for ranking. In fact, I’d wager that there’ll be more of a ranking disadvantage for sites that fail one or two of the thresholds…sites need to start optimising pages collectively for each Core Web Vitals signal.

While certain aspects are easier to fix than others, SEO strategist Sophie Gibson believes the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) could cause you the most trouble to fix if required:

Improving the Largest Contentful Paint metric is one of the more difficult Core Web Vitals to troubleshoot, as there is such a large range of factors which can affect this.

Erwin Hofman noted the intrinsic link between Core Web Vitals and SEO:

Google has long tried to push pagespeedThe Google PageSpeed Insights Tool is a free and easy-to-use tool that provides webmasters with a score (from 0 to 100) that reflects the performance of their site on mobile devices. via Pagespeed Insights and AMP. And now with Core Web Vitals, it really has become inseparable from SEO. Pagespeed optimisation is just like any other part of SEO — one improvement on its own might not yield results, but after making several improvements you see a boost in your SEO performance.

The Impact of Core Web Vitals: Which Sites Are Faltering?

Since page experience became a SERP ranking factor from summer 2021, it has had a notable impact on SEO performance. The size of this impact is dependent on the website type and industry. For instance, healthcare sites that use minimal videos and large images – and boost their load speeds as a result – perform well with their Core Web Vitals, meaning the impact on this industry is generally a minor one.

Google themselves also came out with a statement, highlighting that page experience isn’t the be all and end all as a ranking factor:

While page experience is important, Google still seeks to rank pages with the best information overall, even if the page experience is subpar. Great page experience doesn’t override having great page content. However, in cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, page experience can be much more important for visibility in Search.

The last sentence, however, should be the focus.

When you’re competing for the top spot on Google, your SEO campaign cannot be slack in any department. Simply having great content is not necessarily enough – particularly with the current emphasis placed on page experience. Say there are 10 websites all with high-quality content, but 1 is missing the mark with their Core Web Vitals. It doesn’t take a genius to work out which site is likely to be bottom of the pile and missing out on the first page of Google results.

Furthermore, you only have to look at the July 2021 Core Web Vitals update for evidence on how it can make a drastic difference. Searchmetrics’ Jordan Koene had this to say at the time:

I have seen major rank fluctuation in forums and thin-content websites. But also some bigger companies with a lot of relevant content were affected.

The winners and losers of Core Web Vitals

Due to the measurements used with the Core Web Vitals, certain websites have been affected more than others. As you would expect, some sites didn’t have to make any adjustments to achieve a “Good” rating for all three main guidelines.

Sites that fall into that category include the likes of healthcare, B2B, and dictionaries/reference sites. The reason why sites like these require none or minimal adjustments is due to their structure. Along with having thin text content, they limit the amount of intensive website media – such as large photos and videos – on display. Add in their fast LCP performance, and it’s easy to see why these sites typically perform well.

While they are the winners, the losers are undoubtedly those that contain an extensive collection of images and videos. Think travel, fashion, and other ecommerce websites. These files slow down the load speed, but this isn’t the only issue. The visual stability (CLS) for these sites can also be compromised. This is due to the occurrence of cumulative layout shifts, which happen because of these sites’ dynamic content.

Almost half of the top websites are still failing with Core Web Vitals

That’s right. Even though there has been plenty of time to prepare, shockingly almost half of the top websites out there are failing to hit the mark with their Core Web Vitals.

This measurement is based on research by Search metrics into the top 100 U.S. domains that possess the highest SEO visibility. They reveal that, in February 2022, 43% of these domains did not meet the three requirements set by the Core Web Vitals. This even includes big hitters like Facebook and Instagram.

However, this is a significant shift in the right direction compared to older statistics. Back in early 2020, when Core Web Vitals had yet to be implemented, 78% of the top 100 websites failed to meet the set requirements. What this improvement in just a couple of years shows clearly is that the biggest sites out there take page experience seriously – and so should you.

Based on another study, this one from August 2020 by Screaming Frog, the suggestion is the passing grade drops even more significantly beyond the top 100. They took 20,000 well-ranking URLs and 2,500 keywords for their analysis, and the results revealed:

• 12% of mobile websites passed all three Core Web Vital assessments.
• 13% of desktop websites passed all three Core Web Vital assessments.

Yes, the percentages for both will have increased over time. Yet if they’ve followed the same trajectory as the biggest sites, there are still way too many not taking the Core Web Vitals seriously.

This also means there’s a clear opportunity for your website to boost its SERP rankings.

Auditing Your Core Web Vitals

To benefit from a potential SERP boost, you first need to know how to achieve passing grades with your Core Web Vitals. This is first done by performing an audit. As with all SEO auditing processes, this will discover flaws within your Core Web Vitals – and understand what needs to be done to correct these flaws.

To check Core Web Vitals, the journey begins by logging into the Google Search Console and clicking on the “enhancements” section. From here, you’ll be presented with a visual representation of the Core Web Vitals.  Alternatively, you can make use of our Core Web Vitals Checker to analyse your websites performance, using real Chrome data provided by the Google Lighthouse tool to present your scores in various metrics in a clear way.

If you’re not achieving a “good” score, below are some tips on how to fix Core Web Vitals for your website:

Largest Contentful Paint

• Upgrade to a web host that delivers faster load times.
• Remove third-party scripts that are deemed unnecessary.
• Avoid incorporating large page elements when possible.
• Compress your CSS.
• Use lazy loading, which means media is only loaded when a user scrolls down the page.

First Input Delay

• Make use of a browser cache. Doing so loads your content’s page faster, and this in turn helps the user’s browser breeze through JavaScriptJavascript is one of the web’s key programming languages but coding it incorrectly can cost you in technical SEO terms. In order to avoid common mistakes, and understand how Java operates, here’s a quick guide to coding Java the right way. loading tasks.
• Minify JavaScript or defer it entirely on your webpages.
• Remove third-party scripts which are deemed non-critical. These include heatmaps and Google Analytics.

Cumulative Layout Shift

• Add any new user interface elements below the fold.
• Use reserved spaces for any ad elements.
• For media such as images, videos, and infographics, add these with set size attribute dimensions.

Why SEO and Web Development Needs to Be Aligned

As part of a managed SEO campaign, it has never been more important for your SEO efforts to be aligned with web development. With the introduction of the Core Web Vitals, website performance has become an even greater factor in the battle to win organic search.

While the true impact of Core Web Vitals has yet to be felt, the signs suggest they could play an integral role in future SEO strategies. Make sure to add our Knowledge Hub to your bookmarksIt allows a user to navigate to a site more quickly than they would be able to do so manually, by typing all or part of the website's name to stay up to date with Core Web Vitals updates, along with any other developments in the digital marketing world.