As Google’s Core Web Vitals enter its launching month, understanding the various aspects of page experience and how to improve your site for each of them is crucial.
With that in mind, here are five suggestions for improving your Google’s Core Web Vitals compliance.
1. Minimize JavaScript (JS) Execution
A low FID score indicates that your page interacts with users for more than 300 milliseconds. When such results occur, it might be time to think about optimizing and minimizing your JS execution. This option reduces the time it takes for your browser to execute JS code and display the page.
According to Google, Deferring unused JS is one method of reducing the execution time, thereby leveraging Google’s Core Web Vitals requirements. Here is the best way to check if your website contains any unused JavaScript:
- Begin by going to your website and right-click on it, then select “Inspect.”
- Then go to “Sources” and check at the bottom for three dots. You should include a tool called “Coverage.” Once you have added it, hit the load button.
- When the load is complete, you will check how much JavaScript does not get used on your page.
When you’ve figured out how much JS you have left excess, you should start cutting it down. You can do that in a variety of ways, one of which is code splitting. Minimizing your JS entails breaking up a JavaScript bundle into smaller chunks.
2. Enforce Lazy Loading
If you use photos on your site, it is critical to use lazy loading to protect your site’s User Experience (UX) and Google’s Core Web Vitals score. Essentially, lazy loading enables you to load images as users scroll down the page, preserve your website’s loading speed, and ensure a high LCP score.
3. Optimize and Compress Images
Images are the most important features for several websites. As a result, optimizing them is critical because it can render your page substantially lighter, boosting loading time, LCP score, UX, and search engine ranks, and ultimately, optimize your Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Compressing photos with tiny jpg and increasing your LCP performance may minimize the full page size. You might believe that image compression reduces image quality or reduces resolution. However, the disparity is only visible when you zoom in or if the image gets stored in the incorrect format; otherwise, everything is fine.
Additionally, whenever possible, utilize the jpg format for landscape photographs and the png format for graphics. You can use next-generation formats such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, and WebP. However, you should conduct some research before making your decision.
4. Input Proper Dimensions for Images and Embeds
A CLS score of more than 0.1 is considered poor, and it often gets caused by elements in the CSS file that lack dimensions, such as photos, advertisements, or embeds. Thus, dimensions do matter if you want to increase your CLS score and thus, increase your Google’s Core Web Vitals. Setting the correct width and height allows the browser to enable the appropriate amount of space on the page while the element loads.
For instance, if the proportions of a picture are incorrect, it will normally appear later on a page. While a user consumes the content, it may abruptly drop due to an image that did not load quickly enough since it did not have the right dimensions. In this scenario, the browser could not determine how much space is required for that specific image.
To avoid this picture shift, you may want to set aside a place to display the image ahead of time. If it is loaded off-screen, this operation will prevent layout shifts.
5. Improve Your Server Response Time
The longer it takes for a browser to get content from the server, the longer it takes for anything to render on the screen. A speedier server response time, on the other hand, directly increases every page-load measure, including LCP.
A long server response time can significantly harm your SEO and your website’s user experience. Thus, using Time to First Byte (TTFB) to determine server response time can be beneficial. This metric determines when the user’s web browser obtains the first byte of your page’s content.
However, it might be wise to gather statistics on your server’s present performance before you begin to grasp how you perform. Here are some pointers to consider when you have completed the report:
- Examine the speed of your site hosting.
- Make use of a content delivery network (CDN) for your website.
- Examine your plug-ins.
Conclusion
The response time of a server should be less than 600 milliseconds, according to Google. As a result, following Google’s Core Web Vitals can improve your website’s visibility and ranking in browsers while also giving your users a top-notch browsing experience.
