If there’s one constant in life, it’s that there will always be new changes from Google. Isn’t that how the old adage goes? Well, maybe not, but the fact remains that the search engine and data giant is notorious for switching up the game just as soon as everyone thinks they know how to play it. The latest edition of this comes in the form of “Core Web Vitals.” The term sounds kind of philosophical but also kind of medical, yet… It's neither. Here’s a look at what it is, and what you need to know.
What Are Core Web Vitals?
Google talks about Core Web Vitals as an opportunity to “fix poor user experiences on your site” (like site speed efficiency). Essentially, it’s a new report that aims to show URL performance grouped by status, metric type and URL group (clusters of similar web pages). It’s actually quite straightforward, presented on an overview page with classifications including “poor,” “needs improvement” or “good” to help you understand where your weakest and strongest areas are.
You can click into each to learn more about how - and why - certain URLs are performing a certain way, based on historical user data. For instance, you can review page performance numbers, view details about URL groups affected by the issue and see examples.
What Do We Do With The Information?
The first step is understanding you have a problem, and that’s what Core Web Vitals helps you do. We recommend triaging the areas (we can’t help thinking of this in medical terms since they went with the term “vitals”) - e.g. focusing on the “poor” URLs first, followed by the “needs improvement” URLs.
The next step is to recognize what matters most in the Core Web Vitals reports. Speed has been emphasized by many, and that is indeed an important aspect. But Google representatives have stated that relevance will still be more important than speed.
Our suggestion? Do what you can to improve in both areas. Here’s a great resource we like for increasing page speed, and here’s a post we wrote with still-applicable tips for making your content more relevant and better positioned for SEO.
Any questions? If so, you’re not alone. We’re happy to help you get set up for high performance and high rankings.
Work Habits & Productivity
As an Account Manager, Jason is here to knock our clients' socks off. Literally, he actually loves getting socks for gifts. Jason is here to help take the worry away from our clients by providing exceptional service and thoughtful solutions. Jason is a former agency owner turned StringCanner. He runs on coffee, Irish food, outdoor adventures, and games.
Jay, the CEO of StringCan, oversees strategy and vision, building culture that makes going into work something he looks forward to, recruiting additional awesome team members to help exceed clients goals, leading the team and allocating where StringCan invests time and money.
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