Effective tips on how to improve Google’s core web vitals

July 20, 2022

Effective tips on how to improve Google’s core web vitals

Digital Marketing

Core web vitals are metrics that provide a snapshot of how your website is performing from a technical point of view. These statistics can tell you whether your site is performing well and provide insight into areas that could be improved.

The metrics are broken down into four categories:

  • Speed and performance: This includes metrics like page load time, time to the first byte, average time on page, and more.
  • Security: This includes metrics such as content type, certificate expiration dates, mobile redirects, and more.
  • Mobile-friendliness: Includes metrics like the number of mobile-friendly pages, page speed on mobile devices, and more.
  • Accessibility: Includes metrics like text size on different devices, alt attribute usage on images, and more.

What are the 3 core web vital metrics?

  • Largest Contentful Paint

LCP is a metric that measures how long it takes for the browser to paint a page's first pixels. It's also sometimes called "first meaningful paint" or "first paint" because it usually occurs before other components of the page are rendered. The LCP metric can be used to compare performance between different browsers and operating systems, but it should not be used as an absolute measure of speed due to variations in hardware performance and network conditions.

  • Cumulative Layout Shift

CLS is a metric that measures how quickly CSS styles are applied to elements in a document. CLS is defined as the time when 90% of elements in the document have layout complete. An element has a layout complete when its CSS box model (including borders, padding, floats, etc.) is fully applied, and all text has been laid out onscreen. At this point, an element's dimensions will match its CSS style rules, including any inherited styles from parent elements. This means that if you have three nested divs with different width values for each one.

  • First Input Delay (FID)

First Input Delay is the time between when a user clicks or types and when they see something on the screen. It’s an important metric because it tells how quickly users receive feedback from their input. It can make them feel frustrated if they don’t get quick feedback, but it can also help make their experience more fluid and enjoyable if they receive it quickly.

Tips to improve Google’s core web vitals

Let’s dive into it:

  • Minimising the execution of Javascript (JS)

The most important tip here is to limit the execution time of JS code. This can be achieved by using asynchronous code (e.g., async / await) or splitting the code into multiple files that can be loaded asynchronously (e.g., using require JS).

Use a CDN to host your scripts instead of hosting them on your servers. Hosting scripts on a CDN (Content Delivery Network) will reduce latency and increase performance because the script files are hosted on servers closer to your users than your servers are (assuming they're not located in their home country). A CDN also allows you to serve different versions of a script file depending on where the user is located or what browser he or she uses (e.g., a minified version for older browsers).

  • Add proper dimensions for embeds and images

It is important to provide a high-resolution image or video when you embed an image or video into your page. If your image or video is too small, it will display pixelated and blurry on different devices. You can use Google Tag Manager to add the appropriate height and width attributes on your embed code to display properly on all devices. For example, if you are embedding a YouTube video, you can use Google Tag Manager’s data layer variable features to create a variable that contains the height and width attributes of the embed code:

var videoVars = {};videoVars[“height”] = 468;videoVars[“width”] = 336;gtag('config', 'UA-123456789');gtag('set', 'videoJS', false);gtag('addEventListener', 'load', function(){ga('send', ‘event’, ‘viewability’, ‘1′);});

  • Preload Key Resources

One way to speed up your site is to preload key resources like CSS and JavaScript files. This helps the browser load pages more quickly because the browser doesn’t need to make additional requests for those files until they are actually needed on the page. 

To preload resources, add them as srcset attributes in images (with multiple versions) or link tags with size attributes in CSS files. Make sure that you set both sizes and srcs correctly so that only one version is downloaded initially. In addition, use defer or async on script tags so that JavaScript doesn’t block the parsing of HTML content.

  • Boost your server’s response time

A fast server response time is important for a number of reasons. It helps search engines index your site more efficiently and improves user experience by giving them faster access to what they're looking for. To optimise your site's performance, consider using a CDN (content delivery network) provider that can cache static resources such as images and scripts to reduce the load on your web servers and network bandwidth consumption.

  • Make sure your site is mobile-friendly

Mobile-friendly sites are more likely to rank higher in search results than sites that aren't optimised for mobile devices. For example, Google has stated that having a mobile-friendly site is one factor in determining how high or low your ranking will be on their search engine results pages (SERPs).

  • Use caching for static assets like images and scripts

The more requests made to load all of these assets, the slower your site will feel because each request takes time to process before sending back a response to the browser. Cache these assets, so they don't need to be loaded every time someone visits your site — this will speed up their experience significantly!

  • Evaluate your site’s security issues

The first and most obvious sign that your site has been compromised is a 404 error message. If you see this error message, it means that someone has manipulated the code of your website and replaced it with their code. This code could include malware or viruses damaging your site or stealing visitors' information.

If you can't find any 404 errors on your website, try searching for broken links or other errors within the code. If all else fails, contact a professional who can help fix any security issues on your website.

How will Digiwhiz help you with improving your website’s Google core vitals?

We are a digital marketing agency with an expert team of web developers and SEO specialists. 

Our experts will analyse your site and make suggestions for improvement.

The steps we take include:

  1. Reducing the number of HTTP requests on your site improves the page load time and reduces the size of the HTML code.

  2. Minimising redirects and rewriting URLs correctly so search engines can follow links easily. Improve internal linking structure so that users can easily navigate within your site without getting lost in it.

  3. Simplifying your HTML code by removing unnecessary tags that slow down page loading time, make them bigger, consume more bandwidth and slow down user experience on mobile devices like smartphones or tablets.

And much more. 

For more details regarding SEO services in Melbourne, contact us today.


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