What are core web vitals
The Core Web Vitals are a set of three measures that allow to diagnose the good UX (User eXperience) functioning of a website. They measure the quality of the user experience through criteria such as page loading speed, interactivity time or visual stability. Here are some pointers on what core web vitals are and how to consider them in your SEO strategy.
What are core web vitals? The three indicators:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
The largest element of the user’s window (image, video or text block) that should not exceed 2.5 seconds. In addition to content, this optimization can also depend on server response time, JS and CSS files that block the display, image loading and the connection to third parties.
FID (First Input Delay)
This is an indicator that measures the moment when a user seeks to make his first connection to a page and the moment when the browser can respond to his request. A good score is below 100 ms. To achieve this result, you need to optimize the JS and/or reduce the impact of third parties as much as possible.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
It measures the visual stability of the interface during navigation. The objective for Google is to avoid the frustration of Internet users such as having bits of text appear during navigation. A good score is below 0.1. To achieve the goal, it is therefore necessary to avoid images without size which, in responsive design, pose a problem of positioning and can move several elements.
They started in 2021
The values obtained from Core Web Vitals started counting in Google’s ranking in May 2021. These core web signals are combined with other elements already taken into account, such as mobile-first indexing, the use of HTTPS protocol or the absence of annoying interstitials that prevent the content of the page from being seen at first glance. This combination of signals represents the experience offered by a web page. Longer page load times have negative effects on bounce rate and visitor retention.
How to measure them
To measure Essential Web Signals, there are several Google tools at your disposal, like Google Search Console, Lighthouse, Chrome UX Report (CrUX), PageSpeed Insight and Chrome DevTools.
When learning about what core web vitals are, remember: you should not consider its relevance as a purely SEO project but as a transversal lever that should favorably impact all the components of digital marketing.