Back in early May, Google introduced Core Web Vitals, a set of metrics designed to measure the quality of a website’s user experience. These metrics are related to page load time, interactivity and stability.
Now, Google has announced that they will combine Core Web Vitals with other factors such as mobile-friendliness, website security and the presence of intrusive interstitials to create a comprehensive evaluation of a page’s user experience.
This evaluation will also be incorporated into Google’s search algorithm, meaning Core Web Vitals will be used as a ranking factor.
What are Core Web Vitals?
According to Google, Core Web Vitals "measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger - how annoying!)."
Core Web Vitals are made up of 3 metrics:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures how long it takes a page to load and display the main page content. Aim for an LCP of 2.5 seconds or faster.
First Input Delay (FID) measures how long a user has to wait to interact with a page. A "good" FID is 100 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is the evaluation of how stable a page is as it loads. It measures how much the layout of a page shifts as it loads. Ideally, a page’s CLS should be no more than 0.1.
It’s worth noting, however, that the metrics scored in Core Web Vitals can shift and change as the web evolves. In fact, Google has said they anticipate incorporating more page experience factors into their ranking factors on a "yearly basis" as user expectations change.
How to use Core Web Vitals for your SEO
While the initial reaction to a new Google ranking factor might be annoyance, trepidation or frustration, tracking your site’s Core Web Vitals can help your SEO efforts quite a bit.
If you’ve been working in the SEO world for almost any amount of time you’ve probably noticed that Google constantly "advises" to site owners to provide their users with a “great experience” but didn’t really expound on what that might mean.
Well, now you have actual hard data you can track and analyze to ensure that you are, indeed providing users with a positive page experience.
Google Search Console Core Web Vitals
Google recently replaced the Speed Report in Google Search Console with the new Web Core Vitals report. This provides an overview of how all of your web pages perform against the new metrics, categorizing them as either red, for ‘poor URLs’, orange, for ‘URLs need improvement’, and green, for ‘good URLs’.
References
https://www.woorank.com/en/blog/google-core-web-vitals
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