Google has many different metrics to understand how well a website runs. As a website owner, it’s your job to appeal to Google’s preferences as much as you can, as this means ranking higher in the results pages.
One of these metrics is Core Web Vitals. In this guide, learn:
- Core Web Vitals Meaning/What Are Web Core Vitals
- The Importance of Core Web Vitals
- How to Improve Core Web Vitals
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Google Core Web Vitals are a crucial element of technical SEO. They are a collection of metrics that indicate how well your website runs for users, focusing specifically on the speed of loading times, interactions, and visuals. There are three main metrics here:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): LCP measures the time it takes for the biggest page element to load.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): CLS measures how much anything on the web page unexpectedly shifts when users engage with the site.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP): INP measures the time it takes for the website to respond to user interactions, such as the click of a button.
How Important Are Core Web Vitals?
These site metrics are pretty important, as they are metrics knowingly used by Google to determine how user-friendly a website is.
SEO: Google has over 200 ranking factors for websites, and Core Web Vitals are some of the metrics they use. Scoring better in a Google Core Web Vitals test means you are more likely to rank higher in search results, meaning you are more visible to your target audience.
User Experience: When building and running a website, one of your biggest goals is ensuring a positive user experience, and achieving good Core Web Vitals contributes to that quite significantly, as LCP, CLS, and INP all directly measure different aspects of the user’s experience.
Reduced Bounce Rates: By improving your core web vitals Google, you enhance the site speed and responsiveness. As a result, you’ll notice a reduced bounce rate so that users will stick around for longer.
Higher Conversion Rates: Overall, having a speedy, responsive website will lead to higher conversion rates, particularly for websites running businesses.
Core Web Vitals: A Close Look at Each One
Here, we will take a closer look at these site-specific performance metrics.
Largest Contentful Paint
Largest Contentful Paint, or LCP, is a crucial metric that shows you how quickly users see your page’s content, with the exact measurement being for the largest visual block on the website. It is measured in seconds – the faster, the better.
Good LCP: Under 2.5 Seconds
LCP that Needs Improvement: 2.5-4 Seconds
Poor LCP: Over 4 Seconds
LCP is undoubtedly important as it’s all about speed; any website owner should know that a site loading fast is key to user retention and a higher conversion rate. Slower loading times can have a significant impact on whether users stay.
LCP measures images, background images, and block-level text.
Cumulative Layout Shift
CLS refers to how much the page and its visual elements shift around when a user loads the page – the less unexpected movement, the better. Google measures cumulative layout shift with a simple score. It measures layout shift, distance fraction, and impact fraction.
Stable CLS: 0.1 or Under
CLS that Needs Improvement: 0.1-0.25
Poor CLS: Over 0.25
A user on a website that consistently shifts its elements (especially while a user is trying to read or click on a button) is naturally going to get frustrated. Therefore, this web core vital is highly important for the user experience, and getting it right can improve a website’s click-through rate and conversion rate.
Interaction to Next Paint
Interaction to Next Paint is a core vitals web that came out in March 2024, replacing First Input Delay (FID). INP measures how quickly a page responds to a user interaction. It measures all interactive interactions, whether a user clicks on a button, zooms in on something, or scrolls down.
Good INP: 200 Milliseconds or Less
INP that Needs Improvement: 200-500 Milliseconds
Poor INP: Over 500 Milliseconds
INP is an excellent metric for showing how responsive a page is. The faster a page responds to an interaction by a user, the better it is, and the more likely users will stick around.
How to Check Your Core Vitals
You now know what is Core Web Vitals – so how do you check them?
To perform a core vitals test, you will first need to pick which tool you will use – often, website owners decide to use several to get a better overall idea of how their site runs for its users. We’ll go into how to use the most popular ones here.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a handy free tool that provides many different insights into your website’s performance, and it has a built-in Core Web Vitals test Google. To use this Google Core Web Vitals checker, follow these steps:
- Log in to Your Google Search Console Account
- Click on the Drop-Down List and Select the Website You Want to Run the Test on
- Click on the Experience Section
- Click “Core Web Vitals”
Once you’ve done this, Google Search Console will show you your performance in each of the Google web core vitals metrics. For each one, you will be given a category of Poor, Needs Improvement, and Good.
It’s also useful as it provides performance scores for both desktop and mobile. You might have a good score for your INP on desktop, but not so much on mobile, and therefore know you need to improve your mobile interaction speed times.
Plus, Google Search Console also shows you the specific pages that are causing the negative scores.
However, this web vitals checker does not give you an actual score, only one of the three categories. It’s a great, free tool for identifying which pages require improvement.
Google PageSpeed Insights
This is arguably the best free tool to use. To use this core web vitals SEO tool, head to the PageSpeed Insights website, enter the URL of the page you want to check, and then click on the button that says “Analyse”.
Once you do this, Google PageSpeed Insights will deliver a performance report and score for each metric. This includes a score for the largest contentful paint, interaction to next paint, and cumulative layout shift. It will also provide you with a score for other notable metrics, such as First Contentful Paint and Time to First Byte.
Chrome User Experience Report
Another tool is the Chrome User Experience Report, or CrUX, which is specific to how Chrome interacts with your site (which is still useful, as millions of people use Chrome to access the web).
To use this tool, start by launching the CrUX dashboard and then enter the URL of the page/website you want to check.
Once you have done this, you will be given your results for Core Web Vitals. You’ll be given a general overview of your scoring on LCP, INP, and CLS. On the side, you can click on each one to go into a little more depth.
How to Improve Core Web Vitals
You now know the answer to the question, “What are the Core Web Vitals?”. Now, it’s time to learn how to improve each one.
How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint
- Compress Images: As LCP is all about how quickly images load on your website, one of the easiest ways to improve it is by compressing your images so that they load faster. Making them smaller can make a huge difference to this.
- Optimise Web Fonts: For LCP text elements, consider optimising your font. That might mean reducing the font file size or hosting a font on your own server for faster loading times.
- Enable Page Caching: Enabling page caching is a good idea for improving LCP, as it means images get stored on the server after being loaded for the first time. As a result, the images show up faster.
- Upgrade Web Hosting: If you are currently using shared hosting and want to improve LCP, a sensible step is to switch to a individual hosting plan, as dedicated hosting means your site won’t slow down when other websites receive traffic spikes.
How to Improve Cumulative Shift Layout
- Add Size Attributes: To stop elements from shifting, you’ll want to add size attributes to each one, including the width and height of the images and videos.
- Choose the Right Font: The wrong font can impact your CLS. Instead of using web fonts, stick to fonts that work and load well on the largest number of devices.
- Reserve Space for Ads: One of the biggest problems for CSL is often ads. You can fix that by reserving a specific space for advertisements on your web page.
How to Improve Interaction to Next Paint
- Refine Your JavaScript Code: If your website has very long and large scripts, that could impact your INP metric. One way to improve it is by refining your JavaScript code, removing unnecessary code wherever possible, and breaking down some of the longer tasks.
Other Important Metrics
The three main metrics you check with a Core Web Vitals test are INP, LCP, and CLS, but there are some other metrics to be aware of when building, maintaining, and refining a user-friendly website.
Total Blocking Time
Total blocking time, or TBT, is a metric that looks into how unresponsive a webpage is while it is loading. It’s usually calculated by the long tasks, so anything that takes over 50 milliseconds to complete, for example.
First Contentful Paint
First Contentful Paint (FCP) is another web performance metric that measures the time between when a user clicks on a page and when any part of the page’s content is loaded on the screen. It’s always about the very first Contentful elements.
Time to First Byte
Time to first byte (TTFB) is a web performance metric that tells you how long the server takes to start sending data back. It looks at several different stages of a web request period, including redirect time, DNS lookup time, and server processing time.
What About Search Metrics?
Search metrics are different from site metrics. Search metrics are specific for search engines and assess how well your website meets a user’s intent when typing a query into a search engine. These include relevance metrics like discounted cumulative gain (DCG) and user metrics like search result clicks, search abandonment rate, and search refinements.
If you want to understand all the crucial metrics of your site, consider our full SEO audit.
Can Google Core Web Vitals Change?
Yes – there is always a possibility that Google will decide to alter its metrics. For example, a huge change occurred in March 2024, which is when Google officially replaced First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP). Both measured responsiveness, but FID only measured the first interaction’s delay, whereas INP offers a more comprehensive and accurate metric that shows the delay of all user interactions.
There are currently no new plans for Google to change its Core Web Vitals (that the public knows of). Plus, any of the changes won’t be so significant as to make the current Core Web Vitals obsolete – it’s always best to focus on creating a webpage that ensures an excellent user experience, and that means high speed and responsiveness.
Looking for SEO Help?
We at Click Intelligence are a digital marketing agency that has already helped many websites climb the search engine ladder.
We understand the ins and outs of Google’s preferences. We offer a Core Web Vitals test to our clients, which helps websites understand which metrics they need to improve. On top of that, our SEO audits cover a wide range of ranking factors, so you can be the owner of a site that appears at the top of search engine results pages.
If you’re interested in our services, we are more than happy to hear from you! Get in touch today for a free consultation.
