We all know that making Google happy is like pleasing a 2-year-old — it’s dang near impossible.
But there are some things you can do that will help make Google a bit happier with your website — most notably, acing your Core Web Vitals.
Again, what we’re talking about here is just trying to help Google like our website — it’s not guaranteeing any specific results. It just helps Google appreciate that you paid attention to the four pillars of Core Web Vitals.
In the end, we’re not just helping Google, we’re also doing right by our visitors — making our site load fast, pass Accessibility standards, structured properly for SEO, and follow best practices all provide an incredible boost in overall experience for a user.
So over the next few emails, we’ll talk about the different aspects of Core Web Vitals, one by one, and ensure you understand the importance of each.
If you care to follow along, run your website URL into the page speed test here: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Let’s get started!
#1: Performance
The first measurable identified in Core Web Vitals is Performance.
The Performance score in Core Web Vitals measures how well your website performs in terms of site speed and user experience. This is part of Google’s ranking factors, and they focus on three main aspects of website performance: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. The Performance score combines these factors to give you an overall sense of how your website is doing.
Now, if you went ahead and ran your report, you might look at the results breakdown and be totally bamboozled. It requires some advanced knowledge to understand every piece of the results, but we’ll try to break it down in a simpler way:
Loading Speed (Largest Contentful Paint – LCP): This measures how long it takes for the largest piece of content on your page (like an image or a large text block) to appear. A good score means that content is loading quickly, which is crucial for keeping users engaged.
Interactivity (First Input Delay – FID): This measures how quickly your website responds when a user first interacts with it, like clicking a button or a link. A lower delay means your website feels responsive and smooth.
Visual Stability (Cumulative Layout Shift – CLS): This measures how much the layout of your page shifts around as it loads. For example, if images or ads suddenly move text while you’re reading, it’s considered a poor experience. A stable layout that doesn’t shift unexpectedly scores well.
The overall Performance score is a number between 0 and 100:
- 90-100 is considered good.
- 50-89 needs improvement.
- 0-49 is poor.
This score helps you understand how well your website is performing from a user’s perspective and gives you clear areas to improve for a better overall experience.
Just like in grade school, you should always be aiming for a Performance score of 90-100.
If you score poorly, there can be many methods for helping improve it, just depending on the results. It could be your images are too large, your javascript or CSS needs to be deferred, your loading time is too slow, and many other things.
It would require far more explanation to dive into every detail of what could go wrong and how to improve it, but if you would like to have me take a look and provide further insight on your website’s performance, just hit reply and let me know!
Coming up, we’ll dive into the details of Accessibility.
See you soon!
