In today’s competitive digital world, several online businesses thirst for achieving the same goals, i.e., maximizing the profits, increasing the leads & sales, boosting the traffic, and improving the overall website performance. In simple words, everyone wants their website to stand out in the crowd and attain the best position in SERPs that can deliver value and profitable results. Among the different objectives of the website, ranking high on Google is the most important one. Several tactics or SEO strategies are conducted to reserve the top spot in SERPs, but with Google’s upcoming Core Web Vitals algorithm update, slight changes have been noticed. Core Web Vitals will identify those Google ranking signals that prioritize the user experience.
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With the introduction of all-new Core Web Vitals, it becomes essential to prepare your site in such a way that it can meet Google’s new algorithmic requirements and improve your website performance too. In Core Web Vitals, Google pushes webmaster to prioritize the page experience to achieve your website’s goals in terms of high traffic and ranking.
The early announcement of Google’s 2021 Core Web Vitals gives website owners ample time to plan everything in a line, such as improving the site’s interactivity, visual appearance, and overall performance of the website. Google always brings new updates to ensure your site gains an advantageous position scoring high in UX.
Now the question arises how to prepare your website for Google Core Web Vitals Update? If you are also stuck in between the question, how, when & from where to start, then this post is for you. Here we have covered answers to all your dilemmas and also listed the tips to prepare for Google Core Web Vitals Update.
Before we start, let us consider what Core Web Vital is.
What are Core Web Vitals?
The Google Core Web Vitals are a set of three metrics, namely Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). All these matrices focus on serval aspects such as loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability, and more that add to providing a good UX.
Learn more here about three Google ranking signals. Check out the below-listed point-
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP):
This first metric of Core Web Vitals measures the loading speed of the webpage. It’s a very easy concept that reports the render time, the largest image, video, and text in the viewport. This metric determines how fast does your webpage takes to load, which is influenced by server time, your CSS, JavaScript, client-side rendering. If you ask us, the good loading speed or a good LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), then it is 2.5 seconds or less.
- First Input Delay (FIP):
The next metric, FIP (First Input Display), measures the site’s interactivity. In simple words, it shows how long it takes for the browser to respond and produce a result after the user interacts with the pages. If you click on something and nothing happens, or it responds slowly, then it declines the user experience rate. Here you need to check for different ways to fix this issue and improve the user experience.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS):
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is different from the other two Core Web Vital signals. It is an all-new concept that measures how much your page layout shifts during the loading phase. In this phase, the stability of your website is checked. You may have experienced when you go to a click button, the page suddenly shifts, and you end up hitting something else in the page layout. It adds to the poor user experience.
Is the Core Web Vital Affect the Ranking?
With the early announcement of Core Web Vitals, several questions hit the website owner’s mind, and one of them is, “Will it be going to affect my site’s ranking or traffic?” As we are now very well aware of that in the Core Web Vital update 2021, Google will prioritize those pages that maximize the user experience as a whole. So, you can conclude that this update has now turned out as an important ranking factor to consider. If your website doesn’t meet the standard of vital Google ranking signals, then it will naturally result in lower rankings and a decrease in the site’s traffic. With this update, Google aims to highlight those websites that give the user an enjoyable experience. Not optimizing your website as per Core Web Vitals update will bring unsatisfactory results that no website owner wants to face.
Google’s Core Web Vital Update also includes removing the requirement of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to appear in the Top Stories. It shows that news results will now have to put extra efforts to adapt to the Core Web Vitals, hence you’ll lose the site traffic opportunities.
6 Tips to Prepare Your Website For The Google Core Web Vitals Update
Before we discuss the ideal tips to prepare your website for the Google Core Web Vital Updates, you must prefer finding out the status of your website, viewing your Core Web Vitals report in the Google Search Console. Get an overall idea of your website performance. If the report classifies as good, then it’s time to bring some more improvement to enhance the user experience.
After determining the performance of your website, take a foot forward towards the preparation for Google Core Web Vitals Update-
- Image Optimization
Optimizing your website images is a smart mover you can opt for. You must prefer optimizing the hero image of your website, meeting the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) standards. Compress the image or convert it into an efficient format that won’t affect the loading speed of the webpage. Optimizing your media is a key practice to earn a full score in Google’s new Core Web Vitals updates. It will improve the performance of your website.
- Utilize All Google Optimization Tools
To meet Google’s standard for prioritizing the site’s quality, it is good to consider the site optimization with the assistance of Web Vitals tools, including Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse, Chrome DevTools, Chrome UX report, and the new Web Vitals Chrome extension. All these tools will help you to prepare your website for Gooogle’s 2021 algorithmic update.
- Upgrade Your Web Hosting
Another tip on our list to consider while preparing your website for Google Core Web Vitals update is the up-gradation of your web hosting. We all know that a fast server response time improves the user experience by meeting the standard of different metrics, especially, FID (First Input Display. When your website is equipped with an improved web hosting service, then it will improve the user interaction, shortening the JavaScript execution time.
- Keep a Check on Mobile-Responsiveness
You may be familiar with the concept of “mobile-first indexing” that is applied to every website as of September 2020. Google’s Core Web Vitals update is all about improving the user experience. When it comes to achieving this goal, then your website must meet the mobile-responsiveness factor too. Google prioritizes the mobile-friendly website to offer complete ease to users to access the website even on their mobile devices.
- Reserve Space for Loading Content
When it comes to improving the user experience and meeting all Google’s 2021 update standards, it is good to keep the CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) at a minimum, and this can be possible by including width and height attributes on your site’s image and video elements. With this practice, the browser will be able to allocate the right amount of space when the image, or video, or any media element is loading. This way, you can avoid a sudden shift in your layout and improve the overall user experience on the website.
- Relevant & High-Quality Content is Must
Relevant and high-quality content on the website is also a key to score high in UX. Google reminds webmaster that content relevance is a must for a great user experience. But at the same time, high-quality content is also important as it attracts visitors and adds value to your website. So, make sure that your website is featured with good content to meet the requirements of Google’s all-new 2021 algorithmic update, Core Web Vitals.
Conclusion
Google’s new update, Core Web Vitals, is expected to take effect in March 2021. So, it’s the best time to follow the above-listed essential tips and get prepared for the update. Invest in your page experience to boost your ranking and improve the website performance prioritizing the UX.
Author Bio:
Ravi Sharma, CEO of Webomaze – # 1 SEO Company in Chandigarh is a highly enthusiastic entrepreneur. He has got a great grip on the idea of effective eCommerce Strategies, SEO processes, and tactics which are vital for virtual exposure. He is a fun-loving person and a keen traveler who always hunts to find adventure in new places.
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