Our Approach with Web Vitals

Google's Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the loading performance and user experience of a website. These metrics include things like load time, time to first paint, and the stability of the layout. In recent years, Google has placed a greater emphasis on these metrics as a ranking factor in its search algorithm. This means that websites that have good Core Web Vitals scores are more likely to rank higher in search results.

As the importance of Core Web Vitals has grown, it has become increasingly important for website owners to pay attention to these metrics and take steps to improve them. In this article, we will discuss how fixing Google Core Web Vitals helped us to protect our SEO ranking by using A/B testing to determine the best solutions to adopt.

The first step in improving our Core Web Vitals was to analyze our website using Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. This tool provides a detailed report on the performance of a website, including information on load time, time to first paint, and layout stability. By analyzing this report, we were able to identify specific areas of our website that were causing problems and needed to be addressed.

One of the main issues we identified was that our website was taking too long to load. This was caused by a number of factors, including large image files, unoptimized code, and slow server response times. To address this issue, we used A/B testing to test different solutions and pivot towards the best option. For example, we tested different compression levels for images, different code optimization techniques and various hosting plans.

In addition to load time, we also focused on improving our time to first paint. This metric measures how long it takes for something to be visible on the screen when a user navigates to a website. To improve this metric, we used A/B testing to experiment with different approaches such as reducing the number of requests made by the browser, and optimizing our code to ensure that it was as lightweight as possible.

Using A/B testing allowed us to test different solutions and pivot towards the best option. It allowed us to make data-driven decisions and improve our website's performance in a systematic way. As a result, we were able to significantly improve our Core Web Vitals, which in turn helped us to protect our SEO ranking.

In conclusion, Google's Core Web Vitals are an important ranking factor in the search algorithm and improving them can help to improve a website's SEO ranking. By using A/B testing to test and pivot on the best solutions, we were able to improve our website's performance and protect our ranking. It's important for website owners to regularly monitor their Core Web Vitals and take steps to improve them in order to stay competitive in the search results.