Updated February 2023
In the race for higher organic search rankings, every company with a web presence is trying to please Google and figure out the algorithm being used to rank their website. For the most part, sticking to a consistent content plan and above-the-board SEO tactics will help you rank for your targeted phrases. But, in May of 2020, Google made an announcement that goes beyond what you may be able to update on your own as a marketer.
The Core Web Vitals algorithm update is designed to give visitors to any website a more pleasant, and more secure, page experience than ever before. These updates started rolling out in June 2021 and are now fully in place. If you haven't already made changes to your website to be sure you meet this requirements, it's a good idea to do that now.
To be honest, most of these updates need to be made by someone who understands your website code and how it loads. But even if you can't make the updates yourself, you need to know what's being measured so you will know where you may need to focus your efforts for improving your Core Web Vitals.
We offer a free technical SEO report that can give you a better idea of what Google is seeing and what you might need to do to improve your visibility.
Before going any further, let's discuss what page experience means for both SEO experts and the user. According to Google:
Page experience is a set of signals that measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value. Optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile.
Google wants your visitors to have a great experience. They have outlined the following items as important for ensuring they get the information they're looking for securely, quickly and in an easy-to-use format. These include:
Let's talk about the newest addition to the ranking algorithm, Core Web Vitals, and what they mean for your visibility in Google's search results.
Short answer: Since 2021, page experience has become an even stronger signal that Google evaluates when ranking your web pages in search results.
Most of the page experience items we listed earlier are old news. They're things we've been paying attention to for many years in some cases. While Core Web Vitals aren't new to web development, they are new to the algorithm that is used to rank your website in search results.
This means that we all need to run some tests and see how our websites are performing in each of these areas.
The takeaway: to rank higher on Google search results you have to:
If your Core Web Vitals fall below the mentioned figures, you may have trouble achieving the desired rankings, or, as some websites have already started to experience – you could lose some visibility unless you make changes.
There are a lot of tools out there that can probably give you feedback on your Core Web Vitals. Our team uses the tool that is provided by Google called PageSpeed Insights.
All you have to do is enter the URL and click Analyze.
Google's Search Console — A Core Web Vitals Report is now part of the tools offered in Google Search Console
Page Inspect in Chrome - From "Inspect" choose the Lighthouse tab. This is the tool used by Chrome to evaluate Core Web Vitals. Also created by Google, this will give you similar insight into what is lowering a particular page's score.
SEM Rush - This software, focused on helping you improve your organic visibility, has added reports that will point you in the right direction on Core Web Vitals and what you may need to address. We recommend you review that and then look further into the details of a particular page's issues using PageSpeed Insights.
After analyzing a URL in PageSpeed Insights, you'll see an overall score as well as a breakdown of the various Core Web Vitals. Some data comes from actual usage stats and other data is simulated to represent what Google believes the user is experiencing.
You may notice in the report that some of the information is based on actual results from the website. This is under "Discover what your real users are experiencing." This is called field data. It's collected over the course of about 4 weeks.
Not every website has enough traffic for actual data to be collected. That's why Google also runs reports using a simulated experience. Note that the actual data passes all of the Core Web Vitals, except one. The simulated experience reports something different! This was all from the same website's report on the same day. You'll see the "conditions" placed on the test at the bottom of the results.
Keep scrolling down to see more information about specific issues that were detected. Click the down arrow next to each opportunity to learn more about what Google suggests you could do to improve your score on each item.
If you have conflicting field data and simulated data as we do in this example, the field data is more reliable because it's actual data about your site. However, if you're looking to tweak a few things for an even stronger Core Web Vitals signal, look to the opportunities provided by Google in the lab data so you can see where you might start.
If the opposite scenario appears and your lab data looks great but your field data is not so hot, again use your field data as the starting point of what to fix first.
It's probably best to start with your website developer. Talk to them about the PageSpeed Insights (mobile) scores on specific pages and the items that appear on the reports.
Remember, your home page doesn't represent the speed on the rest of your pages, but it's a good place to start so you can see if there are issues that could be cleared up on all pages of the website.
Here are 7 things you can evaluate on your website for improved Core Web Vitals.
On individual pages, you can take a look at items that are specific to that page such as video player usage, image size, and image quality.
Staying On Top of Page Experience
With the entire Core Web Vitals update finished by the end of August 2021, this is something you can't ignore. Just like we had to switch to responsive web design and https a few years ago, this is another in Google's preferences that drive our decision about how we design and develop websites.
If your web developer is not able to evaluate your website or isn't sure how to make the necessary changes, we're here to help you. Request a free technical SEO audit to see how your site is performing now and what we might recommend to make your meet the latest standards. This is an unbiased, free, assessment of your website's technical SEO that could be affecting your organic search rankings.