Come and understand how core web metrics (LCP, FID and CLS) impact the SEO, and also serve to optimize the user experience within your website.
What are these web metrics?
In order to measure the essential aspects of a page, web metrics always work together. With access to a laboratory database and even field research, Google presented a combination of new metrics and others already known.
The main web metrics are the three most important, and Google asks website owners to find out about them for more efficient optimization of their domains.
And for good reason, after all, if your company has a website, it becomes essential to optimize it to achieve good engagement and reduce bounce rate.
Therefore, Google introduced new metrics that can have an impact on your website's ranking in searches.
And these key metrics are:
- LCP
- IN
- CLS
It seems difficult, right? But it is not. You can let us explain!
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
LCP, translating to “largest painting with content”, is the first metric we will talk about. It is a main web metric, focused on measuring the loading speed that is perceived by the user.
This metric will calculate how long it takes for the largest element to appear on the screen, whether text or image. For example, if your page only has text and a large image, this image will be considered by LCP.
According to Google, the LCP of a page should be less than 2,5 seconds. This way, it also offers a tool that helps you optimize the page, which is called Pagespeed Insights.
Tasks that can optimize LCP are:
- Reduce the time it takes for resources to load;
- Withdraw resources JavaScript e CSS Block;
- Improve element rendering front-end;
- Optimize server response time;
- Recognize the main element and improve loading.
FID (First Input Delay)
O IN, or “first input delay”, is used to measure how long the browser takes to respond to the user’s first interaction. In the meantime, the browser does many tasks at the same time, and to speed up this process, you need to focus on the FID.
FID calculates all the interactions that are happening when the page loads. Therefore, Google says that the ideal value should be less than 100 milliseconds and above that it needs to be optimized.
However, you need to be careful if you want to improve this aspect. Google needs real user data to calculate. He can't just guess the FID from his own data.
However, be careful when trying to optimize your website. Because, if you need to remove processes that delay these interactions, your page may lose some function.
In this sense, you must find solutions that provide the best possible increase in performance.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
The third key web metric is CLS, or, cumulative layout offset. In short, this metric aims to determine how stable page elements load, seeing how often unexpected changes occur in the layout.
CLS can check when the dimensions of an element are not defined. The score can range from 0 to 1, where 0 represents no displacement, and 1 defines the greatest displacement. Therefore, he considers that the CLS value must be below 0,1.
Os ads are those who are most involved in this part. Since they are not always optimized, and also, being from an external server, it is common for them to cause this type of problem.
Still don't understand how it works? Let's give you an example.
A button loads on your screen, inviting you to do something, but meanwhile text is loading in the background. And the moment you click on the button, the text finishes loading and makes the button go up.
It's not a very pleasant thing to happen, and it counts a lot in User Experience.
You can optimize CLS in the following ways:
- If your website has advertisements, leave a separate area just for them;
- Leave the correct dimensions of the images defined;
- If your website doesn't prioritize loading images, keep it organized so the elements don't change position.
How to fix problems
When you receive reports of these metrics, you may notice some issues that need to be fixed. Therefore, here we will show you some solutions that can help with this task.
Being a non-technical user
Prioritize problems: we suggest you check everything marked as “Wide” first, and then start checking for issues affecting the most important URLs.
Once you've set your priorities, send the report to the person who will update your URLs, an engineer, for example.
There are some common page fixes, they are:
- It is recommended to have pages and resources smaller than 500 KB;
- The number of page resources should be less than 50 to perform better on mobile devices;
- Consider using AMP (in Portuguese, accelerated pages for mobile devices), to speed up the page loading process on these devices.
Test your fixes, with tools like Chrome Lighthouse ou PageSpeed Insights.
Please click Start tracking in the Search Console Top Web Metrics report on the issue details page when you think an issue has been resolved.
Finally, now, just follow the validation process.
Website technicians and developers
Rank the priority of problems. We recommend that you focus on what is marked as “Bad”. Then check for issues that hit the most or most important URLS.
We suggest you read web.dev's fast loading guidelines and the Web Fundamentals performance pages to understand how to optimize your page.
You can use a tool to test the corrections you make, such as PageSpeed Insights or Chrome Lighthouse.
Finally, if you think an issue has been fixed, you can Start tracking, in the Search Console Top Web Metrics report on the issue details page.
Now, just follow your validation process.
Google has already announced that in 2021, the user's page experience will become a ranking factor in algorithms. User experience has always played an essential role within the best websites, but now, it will become even more important.
With a study of these web metrics, you will be able to take your website to the top of search engines.
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