The Google Core Web Vitals are designed to set specific factors that Google consider important for the overall experience of any webpage. These vitals are made up of three specific page speed and user interaction measurements known as cumulative layout shift, largest contentful paint and first input delay. Together these components will produce a page experience score which is Google’s way of telling you how strong your overall UX currently is. As we look at the key aspects of the Google Core Web Vital update, the largest contentful paint (LCP) is the speed element that identifies how long it takes a page to load form clicking on a link to seeing the majority of the content on-screen. LCP differentiates from other page speed measurements as it focuses on what really matters when it comes to speed.

To check your current speed performance, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights to do so which is quite helpful as it can help you to easily identify areas to improve. Google PageSpeed Insights also allows you to see how your web pages are performing in the real world. Although worthwhile, it is recommended to check your LCP data in your GSC as it allows you to see the data for your entire site rather than the data from the Chrome User Experience Report through Google PageSpeed Insights. GSC can provide a you with a list of URLs that are good, bad and somewhere in between.

Based on the latest Core Web Vitals you should be aiming for a speed of 2.5 seconds to hit LCP on every page throughout your website. Although this might seem like a lot of work, it is most definitely worth it in the long run. Some helpful tips to improve your LCP would be to upgrade your web host, remove large page elements, set up lazy loading and remove any unnecessary third-party scripts.

There are many other key aspects of the Google Core Web Vital update however your website speed is probably one of the most important. Although implementing these changes will be a time-consuming process Google have said that we have until next year to improve our Core Web Vital scores. We here at Webheads would be more than happy to offer any advice around this that you may need so get in touch now and get a head start.