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Core Web Vitals: SEO in 2021!
According to the Google official announcement of Core Web Vitals in 2020-2021, Google was aware that, so far, it had worked with an excess number of parameters. 3 new indicators aimed at improving the user experience (UX) have emerged in order to measure time loading (LCP), responsiveness (FID), and visual page stability (CLS). It was not easy for someone with little technical knowledge to understand at a glance where exactly the UX and Web.
Although this bet seems futuristic, it is far from Google’s first plan in this direction. Added to this are PageSpeed Insights, Mobile-Friendly Test, Lighthouse among others, and the more general movements that Google has created promoted in recent years.
Core Web Vitals seeks to establish simple and unified criteria for what constitutes a good web experience.
Google regularly introduces new web page relevance measurement, always with the aim of providing the best answers to interns. Thus, the Page Rank (or SEO value of a website) is at the heart of the concerns of marketers in terms of natural referencing: Google algorithm update quantitatively measures the popularity of web pages according to the number of external links pointing to your site. Many other criteria are taken into account, such as the originality of the content, the density of the keywords, …
This is where Core Web Vitals was born, which literally stands for Essential Web Signals – interpreted as a subset of the vital elements of a website/web page.
What are the three indicators of Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals is based on three metrics. Each of them touches on an aspect that is essential for a page to be fast and provide a good user experience. These Core Web Vitals reinforce the measurement of, as broken down below:
What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals are a set of criteria that Google considers important in the overall user experience (UX) that users experience on a website.
Google plans to make the user experience on the page an official ranking factor on Google. But beware, this score is not enough to lift a website to first place on the Google search engine!
Core Web Vitals include three measures:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) for loading time;
- FID (First Input Delay) for interactivity;
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
1. Largest Contentful Paint – LCP
LCP indicator measures content load time marks the exact moment when the largest piece of content – image, video, block of text – above the fold (what you see without scrolling down) is fully charged. A good LCP lasts no more than 2.5 seconds. Considering the causes of a bad LCP indicator, here are our technical recommendations on how to optimize a website’s LCP.
2. First Input Delay – FID
Based on the RAIL (Response Animation Idle Load) framework, the First Input Delay metric measures the responsiveness of the web page. Explicitly, this is the time that elapses between when the user performs an action such as a click and when the browser responds to that interaction.
You’ve probably had the experience of clicking and seeing the page load until it shows you the result of that action.
A good FID must respond at least 0.1 seconds or 100 milliseconds. To achieve this, avoid at all costs using Web Worker, a JS script independent of other scripts that run in the background of an HTML page.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift – CLS
The Cumulative Layout Shift measures visual stability. Oftentimes, elements on a page move around as the content loads and displays on the screen – a pretty boring experience and usually leads to a lot of clicks in the wrong place, clearly ruining the whole thing. navigation experience.
Elements of page load time such as content-paint and time-to-interactive have already been widely measured with tools like PageSpeed Insights, but not Cumulative Layout Shift. In fact, this CLS metric quantifies the frequency and magnitude with which these changes occur on a page.
What impact on your SEO positions in 2021?
Google recalled during the presentation of “Core Web Vitals” that its mission was to classify sites according to their relevance and accessibility.
Google continues to update its ranking algorithm based on traditional criteria (quality and relevance of content, internal linking, crawlability, etc.) while gradually introducing other indicators aimed at improving UX. The following KPIs are already taken into account:
- Mobile compatibility
- HTTPS certificate
- Safe browsing to avoid threats and unwanted software
- Limitation of intrusive interstitials
The addition of “essential web signals” will therefore change Google’s ranking algorithm in 2021.
Google’s own information recommends that longer page load times have adverse effects on bounce rate and visitor retention. Illustrations:
- When the page load time decreases from 1 to 3 seconds, the bounce rate increases by 32%.
- If the page load time is reduced from 1 to 6 seconds, the bounce rate increases by 106%.
The impact on rankings will still be minor as Google claims that the most relevant content will always be first. The quality of the content has priority over the user experience at this time. Overall, Google wants the pages on its search engine to load quickly, especially on mobile, and for the content to be of high quality.
What SEO tools to measure “Core Web Vitals”?
To help you: Core Web Vitals
To help you with this task, Google has introduced a new tool called Core Web Vitals. Thanks to it, you will be able to quantify and qualify the performance of your website. It will then tell you which points you still need to work on. The more you improve your UX, the better Google will rank you in the SERPs. Don’t wait any longer to get the turbo boost, because a major update, the Google Page Experience, has already been announced for the month of May. As her name suggests, she will be primarily interested in UX.
UX on Mobile
And when we’re talking about UX, don’t forget that you need to make it your priority on desktop, tablet, and mobile. UX on mobile should even be favored since more than half of Internet users today are mobile users. And with the rollout of Google’s Mobile First Index, it goes without saying that mobile will take on even greater prominence.
In 2021, your site must be responsive, but still? It should capture the attention of Internet users, seduce them, be readable and answer perfectly to the questions they have. In short, try to reach position zero and do not hesitate to repeat the most common questions in your content to occupy a better position in the search results.
Content to improve
Who says natural referencing says SEO content. We have always known that “content is king”. This year, this rule does not change, but it will have to be better developed. How? ‘Or’ What ? By taking more into account the richness of the semantic field.
In other words, you always start with a main theme, but instead of using the same keywords over and over again, vary your vocabulary without straying from the given theme. Use meaningful and relevant expressions. Try to insert them naturally into your content, preferably by linking them to useful information each time.
Aside from the semantic field, the basic criteria remain relevant, namely the quality of the content and the EAT criteria (Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness).
Structured data to promote
Structured data allows the creation of “rich snippets” by Google. These help crawlers better understand the content of your pages and your site. This year, it will be necessary to work on them more and to do this, think about better detailing your content.
Remember that there are different types of rich snippets (recipe, profile, e-commerce products, …) so try to choose the right formula depending on your industry and the type of content to publish.
- To encourage you to bet more on this point, remember that more than half of the clicks on Google today come from these rich snippets. They are also a great way to reach the Featured Snippet or the infamous zero position in the SERPs.
Local SEO to Boost
Today, almost 55-60% of Google searches come from local SEO. On the one hand, this is because the search engine focuses more on search intentions than on the meaning of keywords alone. By displaying the results, the robots will try to understand what the user really wants while geolocating him.
On the other hand, consumers are forced to limit themselves to a given sector because of the pandemic. Local referencing must therefore be better worked on, especially as for this year, no one yet knows how the health situation will develop.
To take advantage of this windfall, local shops are invited to better reference themselves. To get started, they should already create an online storefront and then update their Google My Business page. This allows them to provide their address, contact details, and even customer reviews on the Internet. For information, customer reviews are essential because they encourage or deter others from becoming customers.
In any case, this new performance measurement tool will force all SEO and web marketing players to adapt. They also push professionals to improve further.
If you want to optimize your website for Google Core Web Vitals, visit SEO Agency Nashville, Tennessee. We are ready to discuss improve the website performance and increase the search ranking result page, Please Call today at (615) 257-1491 or info@devdigital.com.