Google’s Core Web Vitals show that website speed and user experience are intertwined.
Users will leave your site if a web page takes too long to load. It’s nothing new.
Google stated years ago that going from a load time of 1 to 5 seconds will cause 90% of users to leave your site without interacting.
So even if your website ranks high on Google, a slow site will affect your performance.
Because? Because as the user experience declines, people will leave your site without buying your products, reading your content, or interacting with the site.
That said, speed goes far beyond impacting user experience. Core Web Vitals makes it clear that speed is an essential factor.
What are Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals (CWVs) are a set of metrics used to evaluate user experience. They measure the following for both desktop and mobile users:
Loading speed Page response Visual stability
CWVs were introduced in 2020 to provide user-centric, real-world metrics that SEOs and site owners can use to measure usability. The three main elements of CWVs include:
Larger Content Paint (LCP): Measures the load performance of a page. LCP takes into account the first 2.5 seconds of a page load.First Entry Delay (FID): Measures the interactivity between an action on the page and a response.Cumulative Design Change (CLS): Measures the visual stability of a page.
CWVs work to provide a technical side of SEO with a focus on page experience and usability.
Understanding the Page Experience
Page experience, which includes Core Web Vitals, is a ranking signal Google uses to understand “how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page”.
The search engine aims to provide the best results for search queries. If a site is slow, unresponsive or inaccessible and doesn’t work well on mobile, it might not be the best result to deliver.
Various signals shape the experience of the page, including:
Core Web Vitals Mobile-friendlyHTTPSNNon-intrusive interstitials
Google states:
“While page experience is important, Google still looks to rank pages with the best information overall, even if the page experience is lower. A great page experience does not negate having a great page content. However, in cases where there are many pages that may be similar in relevance, the page experience may be much more important to Search visibility.”
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Where page speed meets page experience and SEO
Google’s statement on page experience shows that, all else being created equal, page experience can improve visibility in search results.
So while on-page experience isn’t the only thing you want to focus on, it’s one more element in your control to improve your site’s visibility in the SERPs.
Page speed is an important element because it greatly affects Core Web Vitals and will improve all three components. To find areas for improvement, be sure to run a PageSpeed Insights Report.
Here are some ways to eliminate page speed problems.
1. Reduce coding
You can optimize CSS, JavaScript and HTML. Several tools can help reduce your coding, such as HTMLMinifier, CSSNano i UglifyJS.
2. Remove unused encoding
If you have unused JavaScript or CSS, remove them. Every little bit helps reduce file sizes and speed up your site.
3. Caching
Installing application-level cache can help.
WordPress and most other CMS options have caching plugins that will reduce the load on your site’s database and can dramatically improve CWVs.
If your site hits a database frequently, this can be a bottleneck for your site, so something like Memcached may be needed.
4. Optimize videos and images
An important part of LCP is images and videos.
It is best to compress all image and video files. In most cases, GIFs should be replaced with videos.
If your images or videos are large, consider a content delivery network or third-party hosting.
5. Use lazy loading
One way to improve the loading of a site with a lot of images is to have asynchronous loading, also called lazy loading, to help speed up the first rendering of your site.
6. Use a content delivery network
Placing images, videos, CSS, JavaScript, or any static files on a content delivery network (CDN) is recommended.
A CDN is an ultra-optimized network with servers around the world that hosts your files, improves delivery speed, and reduces the load on your site’s server.
7. Reduce redirects
Your site can have redirects and they are 100% natural in the evolution of a site.
However, you should remove redirect chains, where one page redirects to another that redirects, because they will affect the speed of your site.
8. Audit your plugins
If you’re running a popular CMS, it’s not unusual to have dozens of plugins installed.
You should review all these plugins and replace any that are not used or can be replaced in the same plugin.
9. Upgrade your hosting
Finally, if you’ve done everything else and your page speed won’t improve, you might want to upgrade your hosting.
Some hosts have slow old systems, but most will allow you to add more RAM and CPU to help improve site speed if traffic causes the server to hang.
If you are running an Apache or Nginx server, you can install the PageSpeed module on your server. The advantage of this module is that it works at the server level to improve speed, meaning your site’s application will not be disrupted.
Note: You may need to work with IT or server administrators to implement some of the above changes to improve site speed.
Tips to further improve your page speed
In addition to just focusing on speed, you want to improve the page experience by using the following tips.
Mobile friendly
In 2022, your site must be mobile-friendly. There is no excuse not to use a responsive design on your site that improves the user experience.
Next, if you follow the speed tips above, you’ll also improve your mobile site speed.
Finally, consider:
Removal or reduction of pop-up windows. Create mobile-friendly content with short paragraphs.
Safe Browsing
Safe browsing are two elements of a site that you should already be offering. You will want to:
Run a secure site using HTTPSRun security checks on your siteScan all uploads to your site for malicious code, malware, viruses and more
Routine follow-up is also essential. If your site is compromised, Google will quickly flag it and cause many potential site visitors to leave the site altogether.
Non-intrusive interstitials
Outages are never good for user experience, but they may be necessary to generate revenue or add subscribers to your newsletter. However, you’ll want to do your best to:
Minimize pop-ups Minimize interstitials
Mobile devices have limited screen real estate, and if your site has a lot of pop-ups and interstitials, it can be difficult or impossible to interact with the site, creating a poor page experience.
Review ad networks
If a site is showing ads, there’s another element of page experience impact to consider.
Ad networks will ask you to put coding on your site to serve ads, but if the network is slow to load, it will cause a significant drop in page speed.
You should review:
Ad networks to see the impact they have on your site speed. Any plugins or third-party elements on your site that are outside of your control.
If an ad network, script, or service affects your site speed, it will affect your page experience.
wrapping
While the impact of page speed on SEO shouldn’t be the only thing to focus on, it’s an integral part of optimization that’s mostly within your control.
If you use Core Web Vitals as a guide, your site speed and page experience should improve along with a potential increase in rankings.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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About the author
Ludwig Makhyan is a contributor to Search Engine Land, covering organic and technical SEO. His training is in web development and digital marketing. Ludwig has over 20 years of experience in website design, coding and promotion. He is the co-founder of MAZELESSa business SEO agency.
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