As of this month, Core Web Vitals will become a part of Google's Page Experience ranking signals. And seeing as it's fairly new, there's a lot misinformation and misunderstandings around this topic. So in this video, I'm going to explain exactly what Core Web Vitals are, why they're important, and how to improve them for SEO.
These three metrics measure different page speed aspects. Among these metrics are Visual Load, Visual Stability, and Interactivity. Most importantly, you can measure visual load, visual stability of your web pages measured by Cumulative Layout Shift, and interactivity which is done with First Input Delay.
Like many other factors that contribute to Google's ranking, Web Vitals cannot be viewed independently. Google includes them in its Page Experience ranking signals, which also include mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS, and intrusive interstitials, i.e. pop-ups.
As the project is still very young, no one can predict exactly how much of an impact it will have. Even so, you should probably improve your Core Web Vitals because page speed improves conversions. In fact, Google found that when a site meets the optimal thresholds for the 3 Core Web Vitals metrics, users are 24% less likely to abandon page loads. On top of that, they saw a 22% decrease in new site abandonments and a 24% decrease in shopping site abandonments. Now, before we get into the actual optimizations, you need to understand the two main types of
data for Core Web Vitals metrics. Therefore, field data and laboratory test data are both types of data. The field data comes from the Chrome User Experience Report, also known as CrUX. Basically, Google takes data from Chrome users who have opted-in to share information like browsing history. They then take that data and compute the Now, a huge con is that field data is based on a rolling 28-day average. Therefore, if you make changes to your site, the full impact won't be reflected until around 28 days later. This is where lab test data can help. This type of data is usually generated by tools. For instance, lab test tools ensure consistent results under the same conditions. Meaning, they won't necessarily reflect "real world" data because of factors like location and internet speeds.
On top of that, bots aren't going to interact with your content, whereas humans will. You can see lab data in PageSpeed Insights, with the Lighthouse Chrome Extension and in Chrome Dev Tools.
For example, if we look at the PageSpeed Insights report for our SEO hub page, you'll see that all Core Web Vitals metrics had greater than 75% good loads. So it passes the Core Web Vitals assessment. Whereas our guide on link building doesn't pass the Core Web Vitals Assessment because one or more metrics have less than 75% good loads. The second thing to note is that metrics are measured by device type, meaning mobile Core Web Vitals will be assessed separately from a desktop. And since Google has switched to mobile-first indexing, we're most interested in the mobile scores from a ranking perspective.
Now, the downside to these tools is that you can only check one URL at a time. Or, for tools like Google Search Console, you'll only be able to see field data. So we're actually working on adding Core Web Vitals in our Site Audit tool, where you'll be able to see both field and lab test data for all your pages. And you can use Site Audit free with an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account. Alright, so we're ready to start analyzing and optimizing pages for the three metrics. However, before you begin, you should handle the other basics of Google's Page Experience signals like mobile-friendliness, HTTPS, etc.