Core Web Vitals are soon to be a significant ranking factor. However, very few sites are compliant. Find out how we develop or remediate sites to this standard.

More than ever before, speed and performance matters. Google has announced that Core Web Vitals will be a significant ranking factor starting May, 2021. Our team is experienced in meeting these standards (test this page, if you must) and can help bring your site to compliance. This happens in one of two ways: either via a redesign, or via remediation.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core web vitals are best described as a set of factors that Google considers important with regards to a webpage's overall user experience. There are three page speed measurements and one user interaction measurement as of today to focus on. By utilizing these factors, Google will assign an overall ranking to your sites user experience, and then utilize that data in determining your overall organic search result ranking.

Interested in your core web vital compatibility today? Run a test here, or you can view them in your Google Search Console toolset.

Core Web Vital Factors

As mentioned, there are three core web vital factors which you need to worry about. The section explains what each is, and how they work.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

The easiest way to explain this is to say that LCP is a measurement of how fast a page loads, but judged by looking at what the largest component of the page is, whether it be an image, video, or block of text. The largest item in the viewport is judged in terms of load speed.

First Input Delay (FID)

First input delay is asking how quickly the page can be interacted with. Meaning, when a user clicks on anything, how fast can the browser begin to process that input and produce some action. The purpose here is to avoid users clicking on something and having nothing happen in return.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Cumulative layout shift is a test to see how quickly a page becomes stable. Every internet user has at a time seen a page shift or adjust on load - it's frustrating when a page loads, you click, and it shifts thus changing your intended action into something else.

How Does my Site Perform Today?

There are a variety of tools you can use to test your website's performance today. Google publishes its own Google Pagespeed Insights. WebPageTest is another great tool. And of course, you can also access a variety of testing tools within the Chrome browser which you can use to diagnose issues - read about that here. Finally, be sure to check the Google Search Console to see how your site is performing against these metrics. Using these tools can help you get a near-instant baseline from which to begin your optimizations.

How Do You Achieve Compliance?

While "compliance" isn't something you necessarily achieve, the concept is to score as highly as you can by continuously optimizing your code and platform. There is no one-size-fits-all technique to doing this. For the most part, you have two ways you can approach the task:

1) Redevelop during a redesign: for many, this may be the smartest thing to do. A new, custom web design can be crafted around these requirements, coded from the ground up, and optimized from day one. Of course, this means that any redesign project will take more time, which directly correlates to budget. However, this is the most cost-effective way to do it, if you have the time and resources to undergo an entire redesign project.

2) Remediate existing design: Remediation is possible, but oftentimes will be quite an undertaking. First, aspects of your design may need to be amended. This could yield unpredictable results and present issues through the project. For the most part, we've seen in our experience that most remediations require massive refactoring, or recoding, to be successful. While its entirely possible to remediate, it will take longer to do than it would as part of a redesign. With that said, if your timeframe or budget is limited and your core focus is to comply with the new standards, remediation may make sense.

Budget Considerations

It's important to keep in mind that these are advanced techniques that take time and skill to complete. A custom design plus attention to core web vitals will be a significantly more time-consuming process than a normal design phase. We always tell prospective clients to add more time to their front-end development budgets to account for the effort required to achieve these new standards and performance levels.

What About Off-the-Shelf Solutions?

There are a variety of tools that are being sold today as pagespeed solutions, promising to rank your site highly according to the Google standard. While there is no concrete evidence to support whether they work or do not, we can say that our internal testing does indicate that speeds are increased but the underlying issues are not fixed. Therefore, it is difficult to say that these are viable solutions for increasing pagespeed and positively affecting your SEO ranking.

How Do We Get Started?

To speak with our team about Core Web Vitals and your website, give us a call or schedule a consultation today!