SEO for non-techies
Shopping For a New Web Design(er)?
Here is what you need to look for now that Core Web Vitals is here
Google’s Core Web Vitals update in May is Google’s continuing improvement (?) of their search algorithm. Like it or love it (notice how I did not offer the option of “hate it”), you need to make nice with it. This is Google’s world. We are just living in it.
The best way to make nice with Core Web Vitals is to make sure your new or redesigned website is properly optimized for the following SEO ranking factors: LCP, FID, and CLS. I know, “More acronyms?” It’s not as bad as it sounds.
At the heart of Core Web Vitals, Google has established standards to judge sets of metrics that measure your website’s load time (speed), its responsiveness, and visual stability.
The three metrics for these important standards are:
- Largest contentful paint (LCP)
- First input delay (FID)
- Cumulative layout shift (CLS)
LCP measures site speed and loading time, FID measures site interactivity speed (how long it takes for something to happen when a user clicks on something on the page), and CLS measures your visual stability (no sudden page shifts).
If you’re about to bail on me thinking this is about to get into super-wonky technospeak by a web design/technical SEO geek, I feel you. Good news. I’m not a web designer. Nor am I a technical SEO specialist. I did become certified recently in technical SEO, but that’s my problem. Not yours. I did the certification and swore to never take a technical SEO job.
If that sounds like you, then you’re in good company. I promise this won’t get too techy. Because it would blow my mind as much as yours.
So, let’s blow a kiss to the heroes that are technical SEO specialists and capable web designers. They are the people we need to seek out. And when we seek them out, here is what you want to discuss with them to assess their chops: Can you design me a website that meets my users’ needs with a winning UX, with fast LCP, low FID, and minimal CLS? (Memorize that sentence, make sure you know what it means and then drop that knowledge bomb on your designer and watch them muster their impressed face. Unless you’re dealing with a robot. Or talking on the phone.)
OK, I said “UX,” which means user experience. Forgive me for that one additional tech term, but you probably already know what that is. A good UX is basically one that capably and intuitively positions your website content in optimal ways so as to best serve your users’ search needs. It actually starts before they ever get to your website and extends into real life, with your brand touchpoints and any subsequent human interactions.
That’s heavy. But assuming you have a grasp on crafting a good UX for your users (customers, clients, prospects, stakeholders, etc.) you will have an idea of how to populate your site smartly with your messages.
On your website, you will improve your UX by optimizing LCP, FID, and CLS. LCP measures how long it takes your website to load the largest bit of content on your page (often an image; possibly also a large block of copy). What that means is that if you have a bunch of nicely optimized content and assets on a page, but one huge one, that one huge one is going to render slowly and ding your LCP. Every item needs to be as fast-loading as possible.
Google wants your pages to load with 2.5 seconds of load time or less. If you go up to 4.0 seconds, Core Web Vitals will say you need improvement. If you get to above 4.0 seconds, you are dead to Google. Just kidding. Maybe.
Google is also all about you being lickety-split in terms of how long it takes for something to happen on your page when you click on it. This is FID (first input delay). The lower the number, the better. Click on a button or form or image, etc. Whatever is supposed to happen needs to happen fast. Slow delivery of that next step will ding your FID metric.
Google would like your FID to be 100 milliseconds or less. Up to 300 milliseconds and you are in the realm of needing improvement. Over 300 milliseconds, and, well, I don’t have to say it, do I?
The last of our terrible threes is cumulative layout shift (CLS). This one I’m sure you can totally get behind. It’s all about when you open a page and then it suddenly shifts juuuuuuuuust as you are about to click on something and you end up clicking on something that you didn’t intend to. If you’re like me, this frustrates you. Turns out, Google is aware of this vexing irritation and scores sites based on how they can avoid enraging users with cumulative layout shift.
This also encompasses the visual stability of your site/page. Not only should your page quickly load stably, but it should also remain stable as a user scrolls up and down the page. Your CLS score should be less than .1 to be Googletastic (that may not be an official term).
That means your page experiences some kind of unwanted shift per page load an average of .1 times or less. If your page loads unstably up to an average .25 times, you need improvement. If you go over that, hey, it’s been real. Stay cool and we should totally hang this summer.
Those are the three main metrics to help you thrive in Google’s eyes when it comes to SEO for your site. I am generally not a fan of tests, but in this world, tests are your friend. Google Search Console offers a number of free tests that can tell you how you’re doing with your site’s LCP, FID, and CLS. Check them out or ask your technical SEO/web designer hero/your new best friend to look into it for you.
