Optimizing Websites for Core Web Vitals and Page Experience

Samuel Schmitt

6 years ago

Google considers user experience in its search engine to rank pages.

It is not new. Already, some page experience signals validate whether a web page is optimized for mobile or whether the website is secure.

In its journey to offer a “better web” and ever richer user-centric experiences, Google has announced new ranking factors related to the Page Experience in 2021: The Core Web Vitals.

The Core Web Vitals metrics relate to your website’s page loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability and have been considered in Google Search’s algorithm since May 2021.

In this guide, you are going to learn

What are the Core Web Vitals
What is the impact of the Core Web Vitals for SEO
What free SEO tools to test the Core Web Vitals
How to measure the pages experience of your website with the Search Console
And finally, how you can fix the Core Web Vitals on your website

Let’s build a better page experience together and optimize your website.

Google and the user experience

Google’s mission is to provide the best experience for users of its search engine.

You might like or dislike it, but Google shapes the Web and invites (or forces) website owners to follow the “best” practices.

Google’s initial mission (in 1998) was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

For its 20th anniversary, Google reminded us of the fundamental principles of “Search”. The most important ones are:

First and foremost, we focus on the user. Whether you’re looking for recipes, studying for an exam, or finding information on where to vote, we’re focused on serving your information needs.
We strive to give you the most relevant, highest-quality information as quickly as possible.

To optimize content for SEO (or for Google Search Engine), it is necessary to put the user in the centre and offer complete content, with structured information and also an excellent page experience.

Google wants quality content on pages loading quickly on its search engine.

Let’s look at the page experience and what it means for Google.

What’s the page experience in Google’s eyes?

The Page Experience is a set of signals measured by Google to see if your pages provide a good experience when users visit your site.

For example, Google tries to understand if your page loads fast and is optimized for mobile.

All of the following page experience signals are taken into account to measure a “good page experience” in Google search and are used as a ranking factor:

Mobile-friendliness: Your page is optimized for mobile browsing.
Safe-browsing: Your page does not contain any malicious (malware) or misleading content (phishing).
HTTPS security: The page is served in HTTPS.
No intrusive interstitials: Your page should not have elements that obstruct your main content (such as a popup covering most of the content immediately after the user land on your page… so annoying).
Core Web Vitals: The page provides a great user experience, focusing on loading, interactivity and visual stability.

Most top-ranked websites are already implementing signals such as Mobile-Friendly, HTTPS, safe-browsing and no intrusive interstitials.

This study from 2018 shows that 75% of websites are mobile-friendly.

But do all these sites offer an exceptional experience?

Since 2021 Core Web Vitals has been a signal for Google to define a good page experience on mobile. Note that Core Web Vitals have been part of the desktop ranking systems since February 2022.

The table below summarizes the page experience signals and if they apply to Mobile or Desktop.

Factor	Mobile	Desktop
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	YES	YES
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)	YES	YES
First Input Delay (FID)	YES	YES
HTTPS Security	YES	YES
Absence of intrusive interstitials	YES	YES
Mobile friendliness	YES	NO