Core web vital made the biggest splash in the SEO community in 2021. If you didn’t keep up with that, please check out our separate blog post that covers the basics of this topic in depth. Read: Core Web Vitals: Explain it Like I am Five
In this post, we’ll cover some of the key tips on how you can improve your core web vitals and thereby boost your search ranking and organic traffic.
(Note: Instead of following the DIY measures, if you’re looking for better and quicker results, you can seek help from advanced SEO services providers.
Fix the images
Images on your site are one of the main causes of slowing down page speed and mobile speed (when it comes to desktop, they're not a very big issue). Page speed has a direct impact on your ranking; it might be a good idea to fix this before you start worrying about anything else!
Optimizing your images will make your site load faster, meaning the vital metrics (page speed and mobile speed) that depend on it will increase.
So, compress your images when you upload them to your site. This includes not only saving them as JPGs for photos or PNGs for logos, but also optimizing the size of GIFs and SVGs by using a program like ImageOptim.
If you're using WordPress, then you have a few options. You can use an image optimization plugin like EWWW Image Optimizer or WP Smush to optimize your images before you upload them.
You can also optimize your images by hand. You should use tools like Photoshop's Save For Web feature, which allows you to adjust the quality of an image while keeping it small in file size. If you want to save more time, using free online tools such as TinyPNG or PNGGauntlet are highly recommended.
Look at the server-side of your website
Did you know that every web page you visit is served to you by a server? The server is what stores the data for your site, like text and images. Every time someone loads a page on your site, the server must do some work to deliver the page.
The performance of your server can directly affect the speed of your website. If your server is slow, people might get frustrated with your site and decide not to visit it again.
Optimizing your server consists of several parts. For starters, upgrade your hosting plan. Pick a hosting provider that offers good performance at a fair price. Also, find out how your databases work and see if you can make improvements.
Know what to do with CSS for first fold content delivery
Critical CSS is a kind of progressive enhancement approach to website optimization. By separating the items that need to be displayed from the rest of the page, it allows browsers to render content quickly even before all of the resources are downloaded.
So, critical CSS is the CSS code responsible for the above-the-fold elements of your site that users see immediately after loading. By inlining this code, you reduce the number of HTTP requests needed to render a page, meaning Google can quickly index your content. It also means that users can see the content sooner, so Google favors sites with fast load times.
In general, focus on optimizing your CSS. Remove unnecessary characters and code comments. Minification can help you reduce the number of bytes your page loads from several kilobytes (KB) to just a few hundred bytes.
Get rid of third-party scripts if possible
Many site owners know that third-party scripts can slow down their site. For example, Google Analytics is almost always the largest thing on a page. If you have an e-commerce site and you load a Google Analytics script, it’s going to take a while for that page to load.
But there are lots of other third-party scripts running on your site, and some of them can really hurt performance. Maybe they’re ad scripts that pop up a new window on your page, or social media scripts that auto-post every time you put a new post out there. You don’t need these running all the time. You can even hide them behind a link if you don’t want to get rid of them completely.
Listen to Google’s recommendations for third-party scripts. Try to minimize their impact on your server by making sure they don’t run when they don’t need to run and so on.
If you need help with this, connect with a good SEO agency Sydney.Continue Reading: How to Improve Core Web Vitals? (8 Tips that Work) [Pt 2/2]
Audio Version: Click Here
