The goal of a search engine is to provide users with the best possible experience. To do this, it will select only the best pages to present to its users. If you want to be among those pages, you need to improve your Core Web Vitals, but how? WS Digital Consulting tells you everything you need to know in this guide.
What is the loading speed of a web page?
The loading speed of a website can be understood as the time it takes for the site's content to be fully displayed. In 2010, Google announced that the time taken to load pages would be taken into account when calculating the ranking of that page.
However, in subsequent years, statistics suggested that there was no correlation between the two terms. It was only with the June 2021 update introducing Core Web Vitals that the relationship between loading speed and SEO became clear.
How can a website's loading speed affect its SEO?
The primary objective of SEO is to improve a website's ranking on search engines. Imagine for a moment that your site receives 1,000 visitors per day and that at least 800 of them leave before the page has finished loading. You're probably thinking, so what?
What will happen is that you will not see your sales increase, if ever. Similarly, having detected this failure, Google's algorithm will cause you to lose a few places in the search results ranking.
And if you're beyond the first 10 pages, don't be surprised if you don't get the huge success you expected when you created your website. So, in a nutshell, that's how your loading speed can harm your SEO or, on the contrary, work in its favour. It all depends on the results of your optimisation efforts.
We will conclude this section by saying that a site that loads quickly will provide you with additional benefits such as:
- Attract more visitors and, as a result, increase traffic to your website.;
- To have more pages indexed;
- To increase your PageRank, which in English means the popularity of your page. This popularity will work in your favour by improving your website's ranking.
- To enhance the user experience and reduce the bounce rate.
The role of Core Web Vitals in improving a website's SEO
Right now, you're probably wondering how Core Web Vitals affect your SEO. If so, we'll provide some answers in this section of the article.
First, remember that there are three Core Web Vitals indicators, each with a specific function:
- LCP: Largest Contentful Paint, related to page performance
- FID: First Input Delay, related to the interactivity of the page
- CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift related to page stability
These metrics are closely linked to SEO and, once optimised, can work in your favour. However, it is important to remember that there are many other ranking factors that are sometimes more important than Core Web Vitals. These should also be taken into account if you want to appeal to Google's algorithm responsible for evaluating the SEO of web pages.
Measuring and optimising Core Web Vitals for SEO
Now, here are some tools that will help you optimise your SEO using data provided by Core Web Vitals:
- Google Search Console: as you might expect, this is Google's tool that allows you to identify problematic pages on your website. The report provided by this tool is based on the three Core Web Vitals indicators: Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay, and Largest Contentful Paint.
Before using Google Search Console, you should be aware that if your website URL does not have sufficient data, the tool will be of no use to you. The same applies if your website has not been able to collect enough data for the report. In this case, Google Search Console will redirect you to another tool called PageSpeed Insights.
- PageSpeed Insights: it goes where Google Search Console leaves off. More specifically, it provides optimisation suggestions for pages that need further work.
The report provided by PageSpeed Insights clearly tells you whether or not your website has reached the thresholds for a good user experience. Like the previous tool, the PageSpeed Insights report is based on data provided by Core Web Vitals.
- Lighthouse: this is a website audit tool. It enables developers and website owners to identify issues that may affect the smooth running of their platform and, at the same time, suggest solutions. These solutions will primarily serve to improve the experience of visitors and users of the website.
The parameters of the report provided by Lighthouse are based on LCP, CLS, and Total Blocking Time, which is somewhat similar to FID. These metrics will also be taken into account when calculating your site's performance score.
- Chrome UX Report: the only way to find out how your website is performing is to use real-world data. To do this, Chrome UX Report collects data from users as they interact with it.
This feature is called Real User Monitoring, and it allows you to evaluate the vital elements of your platform. However, please note that you will need a Google Cloud Platform account to access Chrome UX Report.
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