Google announced in late 2020 that Core Web Vitals are to become ranking signals for search engines starting May 2021. This means, it’s time for E-Commerce websites to buckle up for that. Looking for the ways to audit core web vitals? This article has just the answer. Google is the titan in the search engine industry. Most of the searches— business, health, fashion, entertainment, news, and whatever you can think of—are run through Google. This is why Google remains central when it comes to optimizing for search engines.
Improving the user experience on a website is a crucial task in SEO. The search ranking of a site greatly depends upon its UX. And with Google’s Web Vitals update, or what is also called the Page Experience update, it is going to become all the more important. Hence, it is important to optimise your website accordingly.
Google’s core web vitals can help you quantify the UX on your site. Moreover it can help you identify the improvement opportunities. How?
What is even ‘core web vitals’?
Earlier, there were the Web Vitals (Mobile-Friendly, Safe Browsing, HTTPS, and No Intrusive Interstitials) that will now be combined with the Core Web Vitals (Loading, Interactivity, and Visual Stability.)
This is set to come into effect from May 2021. So, it’s high time we prepare for it.
Ways to Audit Core Web Vitals
#1. Get the maximum out of Google tools
Google provides several SEO tools for optimizing your website. This way you will be able to best ensure that your site meets the quality standard of Google. Even Google itself suggests using these tools to prepare for the Core Web Vitals. Below listed are the must-use Google tools:
- Search Console
- Page Speed Insights
- Chrome UX Report
- Lighthouse
- Chrome DevTools
- Web Vitals Chrome Extension
With these tools, you can effectively test your website’s performance. However, if you are not a techie, you’d need a web developer who understands these things very well. Or at least, you’d need someone who has enough expertise in website development to clearly communicate the nuances of the performance report.
And there are other tools like Screaming Frog that can help you audit your website for core web vitals.
#2. Audit Core Web Vitals with crawler
You can also audit Core Web Vitals on your website with a crawler. For this, follow the given steps:
- To get the Core Web Vitals data of your website, use Python script on the API
- Next, take the resulting URLs file and add it to the crawler
- For a clearer view, it is best to create a segmentation
By following these steps, you will get the required Core Web Vitals report data. Then, you’ll be good to analyse!
#3. Core Web Vitals in JavaScript
You can simply push Core Web Vitals data to Google Analytics with the help of JavaScript. It can be done with the help of the given code:
import {get CLS, getFID, getLCP} from ‘web-vitals’ ;
function sendToAnalytics (metric) {
const body = JSOM.stringify (metric) ;
// Use ‘navigator.sendBeacon()’ if available, falling back to ‘fetch()’.
(navigator.sendBeacon & navigator.sendBeacon( ‘ /analytics’, body)) ||
fetch ( ‘ /analytics’, {body, method: ‘POST’, keepalive: true}};}
getCLS (sendToAnalytics) ;
getFID (sendToAnalytics) ;
getLCP (sendToAnalytics) ;
Above stated were some main ways you can audit Core Web Vitals in your website. While you can also do it with the help of tools like Screaming Frog, it is best advised to use Google Tools.
After you have audited Core Web Vitals on your website, next is to fix the issues. For that, the tips below can be really handy.
Ways to fix Core Web Vitals issues
#1. Image optimization
Image optimization is often neglected. However, it is an important SEO website UX factor. Make sure your image appears within the LCP threshold. Moreover, it is best to pre-set image dimensions with size attributes. And don’t forget to add width and height attributes.
#2. Content optimization
Content has an overriding importance in digital marketing in most cases. For Google also, quality content is supreme. So, make sure to maintain EAT-rich and high quality content on your website.
#3. Mobile responsiveness
You must know this by now that Google prioritises the experience of its mobile users. Hence, mobile-responsiveness plays a very crucial role is search engine optimization. And so does it for the Core Web Vitals.
#4. Upgrading web-hosting
If you see issues in the Page Speed, it can many times be due to poor web hosting. Hence, it is best to upgrade your web hosting for quicker server response and minimum delays.
Conclusion
The Core Web Vitals update is also called the Page Experience update as it focuses on the UX of the web page. While you can use different tools to audit your website for Core Web Vitals, it is always best to use Google’s tools. So make sure to use all of these- Search Console, Page Speed Insights, Chrome UX Report, Lighthouse, Chrome DevTools, and Web Vitals Chrome Extension. You can also audit your website effectively with the help of JavaScript and Crawler. The new ranking signals are going to come into effect from May 2021 so buckle up!
As you must have noticed, most of this auditing is technical. Hence, if you don’t have enough knowledge on web development, you’d need professional help. In fact, it is always better to leave it to experts.
If you want to efficiently audit your website for Core Web Vitals, you can leave that to the professional web developers at WebGnext.
Contact WG now!
