A very short article on the reality of Core Web Vitals and how it won’t improve your ranking… that much!
Some web agencies, marketers and influencers tend to heavily over exaggerate the importance of Web Core Vitals in the belief that perfect Core Web Vitals scores must be obtained to rocket you ranking in Google. This simply isn’t true!
We’ve been around long enough (pre Google) to know the fundamentals of Google search and what really improves your ranking. (Spoiler: The secret sauce is “content”.)
We’ve been saying for a long time that Core Web Vitals are not a ranking system in Google, and that it’s really not a good use of time to get that perfect score, aside from the cost and fact that you’d have to make so major changes to your site and hosting to achieve them.
Google have updated their Page Experience documentation to confirm this and avoid confusion.
“Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems. We recommend site owners achieve good Core Web Vitals for success with Search and to ensure a great user experience generally. Keep in mind that getting good results in reports like Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report or third-party tools doesn’t guarantee that your pages will rank at the top of Google Search results; there’s more to great page experience than Core Web Vitals scores alone. These scores are meant to help you to improve your site for your users overall, and trying to get a perfect score just for SEO reasons may not be the best use of your time.”
and
“Beyond Core Web Vitals, other page experience aspects don’t directly help your website rank higher in search results. However, they can make your website more satisfying to use, which is generally aligned with what our ranking systems seek to reward. Therefore it’s still worth working to improve page experience overall.”
The key take-aways are;
- Core Web Vitals don’t directly translate into a better ranking.
- Core Web Vitals are great tools to improve user experience of your site.
- Don’t obsess over your score.
- Ranking signals are more sophisticated that just Core Web Vitals alone.
- Core Web Vital should be seen more as how to deliver a good experience, not a ranking ‘hack’.
- Your website can achieve a less the perfect vitals score but still ranking well in the search results.
