gBear // How to Optimize Core Web Vitals for 2023

In 2021, Google’s Web Vitals became a ranking element. The change was fully implemented for all desktop and mobile searches in February 2022.

Google has been working on new technologies that optimize web performance and experimenting with new performance metrics.

What do the Core Web Vitals mean for rankings?

The Core Web Vitals is a collection of three user experience metrics.

• Largest Useful Content How quickly did the largest piece of text or image appear?
• First input delay: How quickly does the site respond?
• Changing the Cumulative Layout: Is the page stable after rendering or does it move?

These metrics are collected by Google from real users in the Chrome Users Experience Report. These metrics are more important than any other. Pages that rank well in search results will be ranked higher.

Priority hints can be used to speed up your website

Chrome launched Priority Tips last April. This HTML feature allows website owners to mark the most valuable resources on a webpage. This feature is particularly useful for images with the Largest Contentful Paint.

All images on a webpage are loaded with low priority by default. This is because the browser doesn’t know if an image element will be the homepage’s hero image or a small icon at the bottom of the page.

It is common for LCP images loaded with low priority first, and then switched to high priority later. This means that the browser will take longer to download the image.

This request waterfall is an example. The browser is aware of the image, but doesn’t decide it needs to load it.

This problem can be fixed by adding the fetchpriority="high") attribute. The browser loads the LCP image immediately after it is discovered. This causes the Largest Contentful Paint to occur much faster.

Speed tests of high quality on-site

Many site speed tools are available for free on the internet. Many site speed tools that are not based on Google Lighthouse use simulated throttle. This can cause inaccurate reporting. This is also true for Google’s pageSpeed Insights.

To get precise performance data for your website, you can use the no-cost DebugBear website speed tester. These reports contain both lab results and user data from the Google Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX).

The Interaction to Next Paint (INP), a new metric

Core Web Vitals will continue to evolve. In 2022, Google introduced an experimental new metric called Interaction to Next Paint. It measures the time it takes for a user to update the page after they interact with it.

JavaScript is often activated by user interactions. This updates the HTML of the page. To display the new content, the browser must render the page changes.

The Interaction to Next Paint metric aims to fix two limitations in the First Input Delayed metric.

• FID does NOT include the time it takes to process user input.
• FID only considers the first interaction between users

More than 90% sites are currently performing well on the First Input Delay Metric. This is far higher than the case for any of the Core Web Vitals. INP could replace First Input Delay in future as it gives a better evaluation of the website’s user experience.

Safari offers better image support

The bandwidth required to download images is quite large, so browser developers are always working on new formats and platform features. These features are not always fully supported by all major browsers, unfortunately.

There has been some improvement in Safari over the past year. Safari was the first major browser to support the smaller AVIF format. Safari now supports native image lazy loading by using the loading="lazy” attribute.

Recognize and eliminate render-blocking sources

The speed of your website can be affected by rendering-blocking resources. JavaScript requests and many CSS stylesheets block rendering. This means that your website will not display any content until these files are downloaded.

Google now offers better reporting tools to help website owners optimize page load times. , the Performance Insights tab within Chrome DevTools, indicates which render-blocking requests.

Keep an eye on Core Web Vitals throughout the day

Are you ready to put these tips into action?

You can monitor your website continuously with a tool that will verify your optimizations are working. It will also alert you if performance drops. To see what has changed, you can also review past results.

DebugBear monitors the Core Web Vitals for your website over time. It also provides detailed reports that will help you optimize your website. You can also show the impact your actions have had on clients or the rest of the team by generating reports.

DebugBear also keeps track of Lighthouse scores in performance, accessibility and SEO. This gives you a breakdown of the audits that need improvement. Get your 14-day free trial now and get the Core Web Vitals for this year.

Search Engine land – The first post Optimizing Core Web Vitals for 2023 appeared on Search Engine.