Simple Core Web Vitals Practices That Bring Business Results

In today’s economy, it is hard to get ahead. Business owners, CMOs, salespeople, and development managers are looking for increasingly sophisticated methods to drive revenue growth. But is there a better way?

It’s no mystery that the first step to gaining a customer is to be seen. Never before have there been so many tools and companies specialized in making their clients more visible to the public — email marketing, automation, AI, CDPs, A/B testing, social media, and more. However, these tools can be costly.

Each industry comes with its own nuances, but in the rush to bring more customers through the door, it’s easy to forget — and neglect — the basics. Yet, especially in competitive environments, those who focus on the fundamentals tend to come out on top.

Since Google holds somewhat of a monopoly when it comes to search engines, ensuring your website performs well with Google is absolutely crucial.

Core Web Vitals

Google has developed a system to standardize how it evaluates website performance. It is an invaluable SEO tool that uses several key metrics to score each page, starting with the Core Web Vitals:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance (large hero image? Forget about good LCP score).
2. Interaction to Next Paint (INP): Measures responsiveness (how quickly interactive elements on your page react to user input).
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability (if elements on your page move or change size unexpectedly, it can hurt your CLS score).

These are great initial indicators of a page’s performance, and meeting each of their thresholds is essential for a positive evaluation. The best part? It only takes a few good practices from your developer to get these right.

Other Metrics

In addition to Core Web Vitals, Google also provides higher-level measurements of your page, divided into four categories:

1. Performance
2. Accessibility
3. Best Practices
4. SEO

Improvements in Core Web Vitals almost always lead to better scores in these categories as well.

Checklist

Depending on the size and complexity of your website, maxing out these scores might require hiring a team of expert developers, or you might be able to do it in two hours by yourself. In either case, here are some simple, actionable steps that anyone can take without needing too much technical knowledge:

1. Check the format and size of your images. Aim for a maximum of 30-50Kb per image, and use the .webp format, which is specifically designed for web performance without significant loss in quality. You can easily find tools online to convert your images from .jpg to .webp. Smaller images will instantly improve your LCP, Performance, and Best Practices scores.
2. Set "alt" attributes for all your images. Google cares a lot about the experience of users with disabilities, so this is a big part of your Accessibility score. Set the title attribute while you’re at it.
3. Ensure your "button" elements contain text. If they don’t, set the "aria-label" attribute. Do the same for your "a" tags.
4. Use semantic HTML. Most websites can be divided using "header", "main", and "footer" tags. You could probably include a "nav" in your header, and divide your page with "section" tags. Also, use "b" or "em" tags to emphasize text. This helps Google scan your page more effectively and suggest your website in search results. Remember, every page should have only one "h1" tag, and subsequent headings should follow a descending order.
5. Optimize your website's performance. Every second of load time reduces your ranking on Google’s SERP and causes you to lose visitors. Google reports a 32% increase in bounce rate when page load times increase from 1s to 3s. While tools like WordPress or GoDaddy are convenient, they often add excess code that slows down your website and make it prone to hacking. Search for plugins or tools that can compress and minify JavaScript and CSS files to improve performance.
6. Set explicit width and height attributes for your images to prevent layout shifts.
7. Collect reviews on your Google business page. If you don’t already have reviews, ask your clients for at least 20-30. Positive reviews improve credibility and ranking.