Google’s Core Web Vitals don’t have ‘vital’ in the name for nothing: scoring poorly on the criteria imposed by Google could cost you precious leads and sales. Since their announcement in June 2020, the Core Web Vitals have impacted the way we look at website speed, and held those who are running a slow website accountable. Once the upcoming Ranking Signals come into effect it does nothing less, so make sure you’re in the know. This blog will get you ready for what’s coming in May 2021.
What’s new?
Put it in your vocabulary: ‘Ranking Signals’. Google uses this term to describe the characteristics of a website that determine the position in the search engines. From May 2021 the Core Web Vitals will officially become a ranking signal and thus something we cannot ignore any longer. This update will combine existing UX-related signals concerning the user experience or interaction and mobile behavior of a website. Whether it’s called Core Web Vitals or UX related signals, it ultimately does the same thing: it ranks your website’s performance for Google’s search index.
Since its launch in June 2020, the Core Web Vitals have changed the way we perceive page loading time and on-page activity. We were no longer busy with improving performance like First Meaningful Paint or Time to Interactive Index, but we also had to put speed and performance as a number one priority to do good for Google. Focusing specifically on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP – the time it takes to load the majority of the content), First Input Delay (FID – the time it takes for a user to actually interact with your page) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS – how many shifts your content makes after its initial load).
Lost? We’ve got you covered!
Check out our explanation of what the Core Web Vitals mean for marketeers and developers:
The Core Web Vitals are being combined with a set of UX related metrics that make the user experience even more important. Metrics such as mobile-friendliness, HTTPS-security and Safe Browsing are going to become increasingly more important for a site’s ranking in Google.
Speed
But for now: having a fast loading website is still paramount for performance. The Core Web Vitals don’t have the word ‘vital’ in the name for nothing. Make sure your website is running at the right speed, and Google will rank you higher in their search results. Which in turn gets you better leads, and might even increase your sales… But whether for Google, for the Twinkle100 or for yourself: a fast website equals a higher conversion rate of your website. This is good for you and your business.
Adding metrics to its ranking system is nothing new for Google (there’s currently a list of 200+ things they rank their search results on), and no one can improve on all of them at the same time. But it’s vital for you to make sure your website is up to speed – literally.
Twinkle100: Are they ready?
At MeasureWorks we continuously rank websites and match them with the Twinkle100, the top e-Commerce players in the Netherlands. Just like Google, we check websites on the Core Web Vitals performance metrics. With surprising results! 48% of the sites ranked in our Twinkle100 have a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) bigger than 2,5 sec. For your own reference: an LCP between 1 and 2.5 seconds is desirable.
And there’s more:
- 25% of our Twinkle100 does not meet all requirements for all of the Core Web Vitals.
- 56% of our Twinkle100 does not meet all requirements for 1 or 2 Core Web Vitals.
In other words: 81% does not perform well enough on their Core Web Vitals.
That leaves only 19% of our Twinkle100 that does meet all the requirements of the Core Web Vitals. Are you one of them!
Better Core Web Vitals, improves your SEO
With the announcement from Google it’s no secret anymore: make sure you score well on Google’s Core Web Vitals, and your SEO improves. MeasureWorks is consistently playing the performance field with three important elements: user-friendliness, SEO and most important, conversion. To make sure all three elements improve, good website performance is crucial. Gaining insight into your performance, lets you know what needs to be improved. Since June 2020 MeasureWorks performance engineers include Google’s Core Web Vitals into front-end performance optimisation and provide advice on how to improve on them.
This way, you can speed up and improve your ranking. Use the Core Web Vitals (and in extension: Ranking Signals) to your advantage! Become part of our highest ranking 19% – make sure you score well on the Core Web Vital metrics. So come hell or high water: at least your performance is good.
Come on, you’re losing vital seconds!
