If you are paying for SEO and your SEO agency isn’t dealing with the latest Google requirement “Core Web Vitals” (or CWV), then they should be. If you are unsure, then please ask them about it. If they don’t know what you’re talking about and if you enjoy organic traffic via the Google search results, then be worried.
Core Web Vitals is Google’s latest effort to improve the experience of users. It’s designed to measure how users experience the speed, responsiveness and visual stability of the pages on websites that they index prominently in their search results, ie your website. By ensuring a good user experience, they in turn create more value for their advertisers and as a result they push up the value of paid ads resulting in guess what? More revenue for Google.
Now here’s the rub. If your site doesn’t meet Google’s required standards for CWV then you risk losing those valuable positions in the search results. Google have confirmed that Core Web Vitals are becoming ranking signals for search results in May 2021 so you haven’t got long left.
How do you find out if you are at risk? You have three options. Firstly you can check out the CWV reports yourself in Google Search Console. Secondly you could ask your agency to do that for you. Thirdly, or if 1 and 2 aren’t possible or practical, you can ask the experts at Searchvista to take care of things for you. Just call us on the number above and we’ll do the rest.
Specifically, Core Web Vitals is defined technically as the following:
- Largest Contentful Paint: The time it takes for a page’s main content to load. An ideal LCP measurement is 2.5 seconds or faster.
- First Input Delay: The time it takes for a page to become interactive. An ideal measurement is less than 100 ms.
- Cumulative Layout Shift: The amount of unexpected layout shift of visual page content. An ideal measurement is less than 0.1.
Google may add labels in search results that indicate which results provide a good page experience. Google is currently working on visual indicators to identify pages that have met all of the page experience criteria listed above.
Expect a test of the label to roll out soon. If the testing is successful it will launch in May 2021 alongside the page experience update which is the key aspect that threatens search ranks.
Remember that you can ask us for help. Just call the number above and we’ll do the rest.