While, for many years, the user experience seemed to be completely neglected by Google, the ax fell! With the Core Web Vitals, Google wants to see website publishers take a closer look at UX (or user experience).
Core Web Vitals: What are they?
If you work in the world of the web or SEO, it is simply impossible that you have never heard of Core Web Vitals. In June 2020, Google communicated for the very first time on this subject.
Concretely, they are new signals interpreted by Google to rank websites, with a small particularity. They focus on the user experience of websites. If this may seem strange at first glance, Google has specified how the Core Web Vitals will be interpreted by the algorithm of its search engine.
Most beginners, who do not know the definition of SEO, must focus on the latter before going further.
What are the indicators taken into account by the Core Web Vitals?
To better help website publishers, but also agencies, to take this new signal into account, Google has detailed the operation of Core Web Vitals by specifying the following elements:
LCP
The first of these, which will be called LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), focuses on the loading speed of a website.
Thus, it is easy to understand that the faster a website loads, the more it will tend to have a good positioning in the natural search results of Google.
FID
The second signal to take into account, the FID (First Input Delay), focuses on the time a user needs to interact on a page.
This may involve filling out a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter, or even clicking on an add to cart button for an online sales site.
CLS
Finally, the CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) analyzes the stability and accessibility of the content of a web page.
This may concern text rendered illegible on a page, or even untimely loading during navigation.
How to measure Core Web Vitals?
To measure the Core Web Vitals of a website, several solutions are possible. The first solution is well known by website developers. They are available from Google Pagespeed Insights. From a simple URL, webmasters and other developers thus obtain a score for the mobile and desktop version (i.e., on the computer ) of a webpage.
It is also possible to use another Google tool to obtain results, well known by SEOs. Google Search Console is an essential solution for measuring the performance of your website in the Google search engine.
By choosing to use this tool, webmasters have direct access to a detailed report on the Web Vitals without having to submit all the pages one by one. A considerable time saver for websites with several hundreds or thousands of pages.
How do you interpret a site’s Core Web Vitals scores?
Before modifying a website to improve its Core Web Vitals, it is very important to analyze the results obtained. To facilitate the interpretation of site editors, Google indicates scores that webmasters can take into account.
For example, for the LCP, it is not necessary to optimize it if it is less than 2.5 seconds. On the other hand, above 4 seconds, your score will be considered poor by Google.
Regarding the FID, Google considers it excellent if it is equal to or less than 100 milliseconds. On the other hand, beyond 300 milliseconds, the score will be considered bad. Finally, the CLS is measured with a score between 0 and 0.3. It is considered good up to 0.1. Site editors will have to make changes if it exceeds the score of 0.25.
