Core Web Vitals? Cloudflare? — Why is web performance, i.e., the loading speed of your website, important? Performance affects the user experience, and the loading speed of a website affects the conversion rate.
But one of the biggest reasons to be concerned about performance is search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO is the practice of ensuring that websites appear in search engine results, preferably above their competitors’ websites. It no longer focuses solely on keywords, but the number of factors taken into account by Google’s crawlers is constantly increasing. One of the biggest changes in SEO in recent years is Google’s introduction of Core Web Vitals, a new set of metrics to help determine which websites should appear first.
What are Core Web Vitals?
“Core Web Vitals” are web performance metrics that Google uses to help determine which web pages should be displayed in response to search queries. Google began incorporating Core Web Vitals into its ranking algorithms in mid-2021.
There are several “Web Vitals” performance metrics, but Google focuses on these three as its “main” metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), which measures loading speed First Input Delay (FID), which measures interactivity Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), which measures visual stability
The LCP measures the time it takes to load the largest element of a web page, usually an image or a block of text. The general opinion is that the LCP should take 2.5 seconds or less.
FID measures the time between a user’s first attempt to interact with a web page and the time when the web page actually responds, i.e., when the browser is able to perform the requested action. This measures the human experience of when someone is able to click on the screen and have something happen. Website owners should aim for an FID of 100 milliseconds or less. Update: First Input Delay (FID) is no longer a core web metric and was replaced by the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric. As a result, FID support will end on September 9, 2024.
CLS measures the “jumps” of a web page during loading. A good CLS score is 0.1 or less. CLS is a somewhat complex measure; this article has a more complete breakdown of how it is measured. But the general idea is to try to get all elements of the web page to load as close to simultaneously as possible and in their correct positions.
Why are web core values important to your site?
Good scores on these three key web metrics make it more likely that Google will rank your content high in search results.
Low scores make this less likely. But how can you tell if your website is doing well or poorly based on these metrics?
You can measure Core Web Vitals with Cloudflare?
Cloudflare Web Analytics provides you with these metrics for your website. If Cloudflare is already protecting and accelerating your website, you can easily activate Web Analytics with a couple of clicks in your Cloudflare control panel.
Once you have activated Web Analytics and know how your website is doing, it’s time to take the next step: make the necessary improvements to accelerate your website and achieve those Core Web Vitals goals.
How Cloudflare can help you improve Core Web Vitals
Improving LCP: A combination of caching and intelligent routing will improve your website’s LCP. Cloudflare’s content delivery network (CDN) caches your website’s static content in data centers around the world. Because those data centers are physically close to users — within 100 milliseconds of 95% of all Internet users – content has less distance to travel to and from users’ devices, and page loads are correspondingly faster. The sooner content reaches your user, the sooner their browser can start processing it and the sooner they can start interacting.
In addition, Argo Smart Routing sends network traffic over faster routes compared to typical Internet routing. Enabling Argo for your content can speed up page load times by up to 35%.
For websites built with WordPress, Cloudflare offers Automatic Platform Optimization (APO), which can speed up WordPress sites by up to 300%. APO costs $5 per month; learn more here.
FID improvement: Caching and intelligent routing have a similar effect on FID. The faster your web pages load, the faster users can interact with them. Use Cloudflare’s intelligent routing and CDN to get your website’s FID to acceptable levels.
In addition, input delays often occur because the browser is busy running large JavaScript functions. Try creating fast static web pages with Cloudflare Pages, which makes it easy to deploy JAMstack websites and serve those websites from Cloudflare’s CDN.
Improved CLS: Design drift is frequently caused by slow loading or incorrectly sized images. Use Cloudflare Images to quickly store, resize, optimize and deliver even large numbers of images from the Cloudflare edge.
Some of these features are only available with Cloudflare Pro plans and above. Learn more about the Free, Pro and Business plans.
Are there other important performance metrics?
There are a number of other “Web Vitals” in addition to the main ones. You may have heard of some of them, such as First Contentful Paint (FCP), DOMContentLoaded (DCL) and Time to First Byte (TTFB). Measuring these metrics can help identify website performance issues.
However, to optimize your website for search, the three essential web metrics are the most significant. Start measuring your website and optimizing its vital core values with Cloudflare to make sure you don’t fall behind on the search engine results page.
