Are Core Web Vitals a Ranking Factor in 2024?

Google ranks your website differently depending on the performance of the Core Web Vitals. You might have read the above staement before but is it really true?

Here, we will discuss what core web vitals are and explore the truth behind the dependency of Google ranking on core web vitals.

What Are The Core Web Vitals?

Google created a few performance metrics to benchmark web performance, especially the website’s initial page loading time, visual stability, and responsiveness. These are the pillars of core web vitals. Based on these metrics Google PageSpeed Insights provides an overall score for your website’s performance on a scale of 0 to 100.

Impact of Loading Time in Core Web Vitals

Initial loading time is the first thing that your visitors notice when they first stumble upon your website, this first impression of your website has a huge impact on how your business would be percived by the visitor.

Keeping the user experience in mind Google put great importance on the initial loading time. Initial server loading time can be check in 3 different ways depending on at what stage of the webpage loading is considered as loading time.

1. First, it checks the time required to display the website’s first content (the non-white canvas). It is the first thing you see when trying to open a website & it is known as FCP.

2. After that, it measures the required time to display the website’s meaningful content, such as images or text. 

3.  Finally, it calculates the time to display the largest elements like hero images of the web page. 

Visual Stability

After completing the initial loading of the webpage in the browser, the next thing that comes into the scene is its visual stability. Many users may find it annoying if your web page is not stable.

Therefore, Google develops a metric to measure the web page’s visual stability. 

User Interaction

In order to increase your website’s average on-page time, the website’s owner makes it interactive. Therefore, to calculate the website’s responsiveness Google creates a metric. 

How To Pass Core Web Vitals?

To enhance the user experience, your website’s core web vitals test needs to be passed. If your website’s PageSpeed performance has been good continuously for the last 28 days, it will automatically pass the core web vitals assessment in Google PageSpeed Insight (PSI). 

Therefore, instantly increasing the page score can’t help you to pass your core web vital test.  

What is a Good PageSpeed Score?

Here, we will discuss what is the ideal Google PageSpeed Insights score for a website. Google sets some threshold values to categorize the website’s performance. 

A 90 or above PageSpeed score is considered a good PageSpeed performance. On the other hand, if the score lies between 50 and 89, then it is categorized as an average score. So, to achieve a good PageSpeed score, the website needs to be optimized.

Finally, if the website’s page speed score is less than 50, Google considers it a poor score. 

Do Core Web Vitals Affect Your Google Rankings

While many people assume the core web vitals are a tie-breaker, the senior webmaster trends analyst and search relation team lead John Mueller clarified the confusion with his statement about core web vitals.

According to him, these Core Web Vitals are an important ranking factor, more than just a tie-breaker. Let’s clarify this statement with a real-time example.

The popular website Carpe increased organic traffic by almost 10% just by increasing the initial loading time by 52% and visual stability by 41%. Hence, core web vitals optimization can improve Google’s rankings.

Let’s look at another Vodafone example. According to a case study, Vodafone increased its organic traffic by 10% and sales by 8 % by increasing the website’s loading time by 31%.

How To Optimize Core Web Vitals For A Better Google Ranking

As you can see the importance of the core web vitals in the Google ranking. So, to boost your website’s Google rankings, you need to improve your website’s performance by optimizing the core web vitals.

Here we will discuss how to optimize Core Web Virals for the different platforms. 

• For WordPress 
• For Shopify
• Hosted ecommerce platforms 
• Hosted solutions 
• Custom website

Let’s understand in detail. 

Core Web Vitals Optimization for WordPress

WordPress is the most popular open-source CMS platform. As of 2024, there are 810 million WordPress sites, and this number is still increasing rapidly. Many website owners choose WordPress to develop their websites. 

However, the ultimate goal of every owner is to improve the conversion rate by optimizing the website.

• Boosting the Initial Loading Time

In order to boost the initial loading time, you need to follow the below strategies:

1. Compress and optimize your large-sized JPEG and PNG images into the WebP and AVIF formats and add lazy loading in above-the-fold images.

2. Add a link preload for the LCP elements.

3. Eliminate the render-blocking resources like unused CSS and a large JavaScript file.

4. Store the website’s static assets in the browser cache

5. Serve images, stylesheets, and JavaScript files from the Content Delivery Network (CDN).

• Improving the User’s Interactivity

The improvement strategies are to provide a better user experience and increase the average on-page time on your website.  

1. Select a reliable web hosting platform

2. Remove unused JavaScript

3. Implement a web caching mechanism.

• Enhancing the Page’s Stability

To enhance the page stability

1. First, you need to identify the elements that are responsible for your page instability and fix them.

2. Try to use adaptive images.

3. Use web-safe fonts.

To implement the above strategies manually, you need to be proficient in the technical field and have enough time on your hands. Otherwise, to get an effortless solution you need to use RabbitLoader.

Let’s explore how RabbitLoader improves the PageSpeed performance of a WordPress website and passes the Core Web Vitals assessment. 

• RabbitLoader reduces the file image file’s size by losslessly compressing the images into AVIF and WebP formats.

• It eliminates render-blocking resources by generating the critical CSS and deferring the JavaScript files that are not required for the visible area or viewport.

• Rabbitloader stores the static assets in its premium Content Delivery Network (CDN).

• It adds link preload to the largest element such as hero images or text blocks.

• RabbitLoader minifies unnecessary characters such as comments, line breaks, and large variable names from your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.

• RabbitLoader uses the browser caching mechanism to enhance the website’s page speed.

• RabbitLoader is an all-in-one WordPress optimization plugin. So, you don’t need to invest your money in other optimization tools.

Optimize the Core Web Vitals in Shopify

When creating a website in Shopify, you don’t need to make an extra effort to convert the images into WebP format or add any CDN.

Only you need to generate a critical path CSS and optimize your JavaScvript file in order to speed up your Shopify website. To do so, you need to use an app like RabbitLoader and enhance your user experience. 

Boosts the Core Web Vitals Performance in Custom Websites (Laravel and PHP-Based Websites)

If you have a proper web development team, you often create your website in PHP and Laravel. As a website owner, only creating a website is not enough to make a profit from the brand it needs to optimize the page speed as well.

In order to optimize your PHP and Laravel website, you must convert your images into next-gen format, use CDN, add a browser mechanism, implement lazy loading along with generating critical CSS, and optimize JavaScript files.

These optimization techniques require huge effort as well as time. Therefore, for an effortless solution, you need to install an SDK like RabbitLoader that has inbuilt optimization features like bulk image optimization, a premium CDN, and others.

Improve the Core Web Vitals Performance in Hosted ECommerce Platforms

If you have an enterprise level business, you often use HubSpot, Big Commerce, PrestaShop platform. If you are using the pro version which provides a license and hosting, then your images are optimized automatically.

To achieve a better page speed performance, you need to generate critical CSS and optimize your JavaScript files.

Optimization of Core Web Vitals in a Hosted Solution

The hosted solution platforms such as Wix, Weebly, framer, or web-flow (membership purpose) don’t need to be optimized to achieve an acceptable score. However, if you want a desirable score, you need to eliminate the render-blocking resource by optimizing the JavaScript file and generating the critical CSS file.