Don’t Lose Your Place In Line: Google’s Core Web Vitals & Ranking In 2021

Table of Contents

1. 1. What Are Core Web Vitals?
   2. Why You Need Optimized Core Web Vitals
   3. Work With An Expert Like Shaka Web Design Services To Ensure Your New Website Build Is Keeping Up With The Latest Changes

In the ever-evolving world of Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO), ensuring that your website is fully developed with the latest search protocols is essential. If your website isn’t equipped with the data that Google’s search algorithms are searching for today, potential customers or clients won’t be able to find you tomorrow.

Like never before, understanding how to maximize your online presence is a must for boosting your traffic and revenue. The latest analytics metric on the digital scene is Core Web Vitals – a full set of metrics that rate the performance of your site and determine your site’s ability to reach searching customers online.

The kicker with Core Web Vitals is that Google defines what characteristics and metrics of your site are vital for what is considered “user experience.” Starting in May of 2021, Google will begin utilizing Core Web Vitals as part of their full search engine ranking algorithm. This means that for your SEO to remain top-notch, you will want to ensure that your Core Web Vitals are up to snuff.

What Are Core Web Vitals?

One of Google’s goals is to ensure that visitors to websites have a productive and enjoyable user experience (UX) – and to try and accomplish this, a variety of data-driven measurements are constantly taken on websites to provide a Core Web Vitals score.

Core Web Vitals offer a set of three metrics related to your site’s speed, visuals, and responsiveness. In particular, Google defines these three measures as follows:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
Largest contentful paint refers to the amount of time that a page’s main content loads on the user’s device when the site is accessed. In general, an LCP to shoot for is around 2.5 seconds of loading time or faster.

First Input Delay (FID)
Not only should your website load quickly, but it should be interactive just as fast. First Input Delay is a measure referring to the amount of time that it takes for a page’s interactive elements to come to life. A rule of thumb is for interactive content to become active within 100 milliseconds of the page loading.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
The third metric in Google’s Core Web Vitals is cumulative layout shift. The CLS is the amount of layout shift in the visuals of a page that occurs once the page is loaded. A good CLS is any measurement of 0.1 or less.

Why You Need Optimized Core Web Vitals

There is nothing worse than a website that functions poorly. Google, taking notice of online consumer behaviors, will begin taking into account the Core Web Vitals score of websites to help rank sites in search results to only offer the most effective websites for online visitors.

For example, consider the last time you visited a website and attempted to click on a button – only to have a piece of content or advertisement load unexpectedly, forcing you to accidentally click on a link you didn’t want to open. This little bit of frustration will undoubtedly cause visitors to grow irritated with your website, and quickly move on to a higher-functioning option.

By ensuring that your LCP and FID are fast, and your CLS is low, you can offer a pristine and fast website experience to your online visitors. Starting in May of 2021, the better your Core Web Vitals, the higher your page will rank on search results. This is why making sure that your Core Web Vitals are as much a part of your overall web development strategy as your SEO.

Work With An Expert Like Shaka Web Design Services To Ensure Your New Website Build Is Keeping Up With The Latest Changes

With Google making the shift toward UX-based ranking metrics, it is more important than ever to ensure that your website is built with the latest features for your visitors.

The inner-workings of Core Web Vitals optimization can be a bit complicated for those who are unfamiliar with Google search metrics. If you want to ensure that your site is ready to meet the new expectations of Google’s latest 2021 metric shift, consider partnering with an experienced web developer like Shaka Web Design Services who can guide you step-by-step through the optimization process they take in every website build.

At Shaka Web Design Services, our team of web developers are staying ahead of the trends and helping brands and businesses across the globe take advantage of Google’s SEO ranking algorithms. With the help of a Shaka Web Design Services, you can ensure that your new website will be optimized for Core Web Vitals before the May 2021 ranking update and any future changes in algorithm – helping make sure your business’s name and information stay at the top of the search results!

Want to learn more? Contact the team at Shaka Web Designs Services today to find out about website development and many other services to give your brand an edge over the competition.