Google will be releasing a core update in May that will have an impact on search engine rankings starting this summer. How your website loads on desktop and mobile devices will play a future role in how well you rank on search engines. Load time, interactivity, and visual stability are all aspects that Next Wave Services can help you address on your website so that you perform well on search engines in the coming months.
What Does Google Look At With Its Core Vitals Update?
There are a few different factors that Google will look at with its core vitals update. First and foremost, Google will look at your website’s Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This is a measure of how long the largest element of your website takes to load. For example, if your website has a large hero image or banner, this could impact your website’s load speed. Another metric that Google will look at is the First Input Delay (FID), which is how long it takes your website to respond after a visitor interacts with a button or a link. Finally, Google will also look at your website’s Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). CLS measures unexpected movements of the web page as it loads onto an Internet browser.
Let’s take a look at how Next Wave Services can help you address these issues on your website to make sure that you continue to rank well after the update.
Addressing Largest Contentful Paint
Many websites have certain large elements that take a long time to load on mobile devices. These include videos, large images, and banners. Here are some things that can help reduce your largest contentful paint:
Use compressed images whenever possible.
If you are using an embeddable map or a video, consider placing these on an internal page so that your homepage loads more quickly.
Wix also has a caching option to make your website load more quickly.
Addressing Cumulative Layout Shift
There are a wide variety of things that can cause your website’s layout to shift on different devices. For example, an embedded social media feed is very script heavy and will cause your web page layout to change as the page is loading. Videos that are embedded from YouTube or Vimeo can also cause Cumulative Layout Shift.
If you embed iframes on a page from a third-party source, this can also contribute to a higher Cumulative Layout Shift on your website. Consider placing iframes on internal pages that are a click away from the homepage so that your website loads faster on smartphone devices. Here are some examples of some other elements that can contribute to Cumulative Layout Shift:
Dynamically Injected Content: Any type of embed that you place on a webpage, such as a banner ad, will make your website less stable as it loads on a browser.
Animations: Any sort of animation that you place on a webpage will cause your website to have a higher cumulative layout shift.
Non-Standardized Fonts: Pick one font to use on your webpage and throughout your website. Different fonts have to be called from your CSS, which can potentially alter your cumulative layout shift as well as your website load speed. The larger the text, the worse your cumulative layout shift will be.
Elements That Require a Fast Network Response: Things like Instagram galleries may impact the look of your website as it loads. Use these sparingly on your website to lower the impact of Cumulative Layout Shift.
Addressing First Input Delay
There are a wide variety of ways to speed up your website so that when a user interacts with a button or a link, they get a faster response. First and foremost, pages that are heavier in terms of images and videos will take a longer time to load. So if a page is internally linked from your homepage, consider the size of images and videos that are placed on it.
How Next Wave Services Will Help You Prepare for The Core Web Vitals Update
Whether you are using Next Wave Services for website design or maintenance, our team is fully equipped to help you make your Wix website ready for the Google Core Web Vitals update. Here are some ways that our services will help you have a pristine website:
If you provide us with text, we will make sure that it is correctly formatted on the page to use the same web font, helping with CLS.
We will make sure that you have a website that is well-optimized for smartphones, tablets, and desktop devices.
We will make sure that your images are properly formatted in terms of compression and size, as well as remove old images from your gallery if you are no longer using them, which can help improve page load speed and largest contentful paint.
If you are designing a particular type of website, we’ll advise on placement of videos, embeddable maps, and other elements to make sure that they do not impact the performance of your Core Web Vitals.
Generally speaking, here are some things we focus on in the initial first consultation to make sure clients have the website that they want, but is also well-optimized for different devices:
Using simple elements, such as images on above-the-fold content.
We make sure that the correct format of images are used for Wix.
Making sure that any iframes, embedded third-party apps are on secondary pages so that your website still loads quickly.
We are pleased to be the leading website designer in Charlotte, NC and provide users with websites that will perform well as Google rolls out its Core Web Vitals update.