If you have a website, you know that it’s never really done. There’s always some new thing to do, some tweak or update that you could make to improve your site’s performance and get more traffic.
While it’s easy to get lost in all the things you could be doing on your site—and there are a lot of them—there are some fundamental elements that every website needs to have if it wants to succeed. These elements are called core web vitals (CVW) and can make or break your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
If you want to improve your SEO, it’s essential that you understand what core web vitals are, why they’re important for a strong SEO strategy, and how to measure them to improve your site’s performance.
What are core web vitals?
What’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is it the site? Or is it the experience of using it? If you’re like me, it’s a bit of both. It’s about how easy it’s for me to use your site.
And that’s what core web vitals are all about: ensuring that your website helps people do what they want to do on your site. Whether that means finding information quickly and easily or getting in touch with someone at your company, core web vitals help ensure that every visitor has a fantastic experience while they’re on your site—no matter what they’re trying to do.
And while you can use many metrics to measure core web vitals, three elements stand out: loading speed, user interaction, and visual stability. These three elements impact how users interact with a website – so if one is off, it can significantly impact how users perceive your brand.
Why are core web vitals important for SEO?
Core web vitals are important for SEO because they improve user experience, and Google wants to provide its users with a good experience.
You don’t need to be an SEO expert to know that how people interact with your site directly impacts how they feel about it—and how they think about it can impact whether or not they keep coming back. And when you consider that Google’s goal is to provide its users with a good experience, it makes sense that they want to ensure that any pages they show in search results also provide a good experience.
That’s why core web vitals are important for SEO: They help you improve user experience and increase customer satisfaction—which means more traffic from potential customers who are happy with what they find when they visit your site.
Important note: The Google Page Experience update rolled out in 2021 for mobile and 2022 for desktop, and it includes core web vitals as a ranking factor. (see also the Google Helpful Content Update)
How to measure your core web vitals
Your website is a living, breathing thing. It’s constantly changing and evolving to meet your customer’s needs—and it should be! But how do you measure its health?
Fortunately, several tools are available to help you assess what areas of your website need improvement. Let’s take a look at four of them:
- PageSpeed Insights – This free tool reports a page’s user experience on mobile and desktop devices and provides suggestions on how you may improve that page.
- Google Search Console – The new Core Web Vitals report in Search Console helps you identify groups of pages across your site that require attention.
- Web Vitals Extension – This extension measures the Core Web Vitals, providing instant feedback on loading, interactivity, and layout shift metrics.
- Lighthouse – An open-source, automated tool for improving your web apps’ performance, quality, and correctness.
Conclusion
In this post, we explored why core web vitals are crucial for improving the SEO performance of your website, and we hope you’ve taken something away from it.
We know getting lost in the jargon, and technical SEO details is easy. Still, the truth is that improving your website’s performance is about more than just understanding how to use the right keywords or optimizing your site for search engines. It’s about improving your content, improving the user experience on your site, and understanding what makes people want to use your services in the first place.
We know all this information can be overwhelming, so we’re here! Contact us today if you’re looking for some help with your website or want to ensure everything’s running smoothly!
