The crux of the Core Vital Update is ensuring that your website visitors see the content of your site quickly. Page loading times on desktop and mobile are now more important than ever.
So in this article we give you some practical advice on what you need to look out for and , where possible, do.
Monitor your page loading times.
You can monitor your page loading experiences via Search Console – it is free, and it will tell you what you need to do to improve your site.
Nothing is perfect, and there may be some allowable weaknesses on your site caused, for example, by:
- Website platform
- Website theme
- The functionality you require (eCommerce sites in particular)
The trick is to counteract known/necessary ‘weight’ with other best practice measures.
TIP: There is always a trade-off between what is required and then the speed impact. It’s down to you to create that balance.
Want to read more about Core Vital Updates – start here
Reduce your page loading times.
- Review your site and strip it back. Remove old content from the site and images from the image library. This is especially important if you have an ageing website that has been refreshed several times.
- Any videos? Don’t let them autoplay.
- Sliders and other animated elements – on mobile, this can have a considerable impact. Are they 100% necessary?
- Have a crazy number of plugins? – review and remove, and those you are keeping are they the best and lightest versions?
- Remove any redirects and clean up broken links.
- Check your hosting is fit for purpose and speak to your hosting provider.
Other things you will need an expert for, i.e.:
- Striping leftover code from your database for a deep clean once the above has been completed.
- Checking hosting caching options are set up correctly.
- Do you have a thousand bits of code trying to load as soon as the website opens? – utilise Google Tag manager and give them an order in which they fire up.
Consider page experience V web experience
Our advice has always been to treat all of your core pages like potential landing pages and track how effective they are. Just because one page works in one way doesn’t mean another will have the same impact.
Keeping an eye on metrics like:
- Traffic to a page
- Bounce rate
- Page loading times
- Keywords that page is ranking for and their bounce rate
- Conversion rates
TIP: Do not make too many changes at once; otherwise, you will not know what has influenced the change.
Added Value. A lighter site also has less impact on the environment, with server load directly influencing your carbon output.
Which you can read about in our Essentialism in Marketing blog.
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