Even though many things affect user experience, a poor CLS score not only frustrates users but also harms your SEO. Google cares about CLS, so you should too; otherwise, you will lose your chances of ranking on search results.

This is why understanding what is CLS issue​ and how to solve CLS issues is super necessary for improving your site’s performance.

And this guide is just right for that. Here we will also address the biggest reasons why your page shifts and the top ways to stop this. So, won’t it be a smart move to fix them on the spot and not let your visitors struggle with your unstable site?

If you agree, then let’s start with understanding CLS thoroughly.

What is Cumulative Layout Shift Meaning?

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures how stable your webpage looks while loading. It calculates the total amount of unexpected movements on your page. A layout shift happens when something changes its position or size, pushing other content around.

Search engines want you to have a good CLS score (less than 0.1) because it directly affects user experience. If your website jumps around too much, visitors will struggle to use it. And guess what, Google never wants its users to suffer like that.

CLS is one of the important metrics (Core Web Vitals) that negatively affect your rankings if it is too high.

But a fully static page, (which is the best case) has a score as low as zero.

Now let’s learn how will you find out if you are in a good space or bad.

How to Measure Your CLS Score?

You know what, a high score means your page has too many unexpected shifts. This directly shows your website as an unreliable one. If visitors feel this way, they won’t even trust you so forget about them making a purchase. And that’s too bad for your business.

So, only with proper optimization your site will look smooth, feel stable, and rank higher.

CLS Standards

If your grade is average or poor then you need instant help. And as I told you earlier, we will provide you with that.

But first, go through these two popular methods to perform a Cumulative Layout Shift test:

• Lab testing (helps you find and fix problems in a controlled environment)
• Field testing (tells you how real users experience your website)

Tool Name	Lab Data	Field Data
Lighthouse	Yes	No
PageSpeed Insights	Yes	Yes
Chrome DevTools	Yes	No
Chrome User Experience Report  (CrUX)	No	Yes
Search Console  (Core Web Vitals Report)	No	Yes
WebPageTest	Yes	No
GTmetrix	Yes	No

However, don’t just rely on one instead go for both lab and field tests to fully understand your website’s CLS.

Now that you know your scores, let’s understand what is causing it and how to fix CLS issue in WordPress or Shopify.

Common Cumulative Layout Shift Causes and Ways to Solve Them

You might not know but you may have different CLS scores for different pages and screens. Plus, layout shifts on mobile screens have an even bigger impact on mobile users. As more than 60% of all online searches are now carried out on a mobile device, you must optimize your website for a smoother experience.

Now, let’s get back to the point, see the below factors that cause CLS issues:

• Images, Buttons, and Links Without Set Dimensions
• Ads, Banners, or Embeds Without Reserved Space
• Slow-Loading Web Fonts (FOUT & FOIT)
• Messy Animations & Transitions

Yes, these elements are causing you trouble, but do not worry. The blog is not completed yet, here is the information on how to solve CLS issue:

1. Define Width And Height In CSS or Html

Your browser does not know how much space images, buttons, links, iframes, and videos will need, so it lets the page load first and then adjusts it when the content finally appears. Thus, everything seems to jump around as not having set dimensions.

To fix this CLS issue, you need to:

• Set fixed height and width for all images, videos, iframes, and other elements in your CSS or HTML.
• Plus, add a placeholder, if you’re using lazy-loaded images with the exact same dimension of the image.

So, instead of letting your site face bad SEO rankings, take control and define sizes in advance. This simple step on how to improve CLS score goes beyond just making your page look stable.

2. Allocate Space Beforehand for Dynamic Content

Instead of keeping room for Ads, Banners, Embeds, or third-party scripts, the browser loads the visible content first. Then, when these missing elements arrive, they force everything to move and cause Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) problems.

Here no one is guilty, it is just that you haven’t reserved space for dynamic content.

But no worries, here is how to fix CLS issue now:

• Set a fixed height and width for ads, embeds, chatbots, social media feeds, etc. using CSS (min-height, min-width).
• Place a blank container (placeholder) so nothing moves when it appears.
• Avoid injecting content above existing elements or always load them below or inside pre-allocated spaces.
• To display ads, you have to choose the ad size range wisely based on past data.

By doing this, you indirectly tell the browser how much space these elements will take and prevent unnecessary moving of the entire page.

3. Apply Font-Display: Swap and Preload Key Fonts

The third tip on how to fix the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issue is related to web fonts. Don’t we all love web fonts because they are beautiful and make our website stand out? But, it does have some drawbacks like, layout shifts as they take a long time to load in.

These custom fonts are not in your local system so your browser needs time to download them. While the web font is downloading, the page usually renderers with a fallback font (inbuilt system fonts) which may differ in size from the final font.

This is where CLS occurs, but you can prevent it through:

• Telling the browser to show a fallback font immediately while loading the custom one. Once the custom font is ready, it swaps in seamlessly without causing delays.
• Add <link rel=”preload”> in your HTML to load essential fonts early, so they’re available before content appears.
• You should self-host fonts instead of relying on external sources like Google Fonts. Also, use modern .woff2 files instead of outdated .woff and .ttf for better performance.
• Use only necessary font weights and styles to keep file sizes small and Pick a system font that closely matches your custom font.

4. Use CSS Transform and Opacity Instead of Animations

Where Animations make your website feel alive, but can also mess up your layout if not done in the right way.

Do you know, that when we animate properties like width, height, margin, or position, our page constantly reflows and adjusts? Yeah, but it can cause layout shifts; if not done in the right way.

You can solve this type of Cumulative Layout Shift issue by:

• Use transform: scale() to resize elements smoothly without affecting the layout.
• Apply opacity to fade elements in or out without shifting content.
• Replace direct position changes with transform: translateX() or translateY() instead of modifying top, left, or margin.
• You should prefer CSS transitions more over animations, as they create smoother effects and yet reduce layout shifts.
• Try avoiding animating width, height, box-shadow, or box-sizing, as much as possible and stick to transform properties like translate, scale, rotate, or skew to prevent re-layout issues.

Moreover, regularly check how you are performing against your competitors and what you can do to improve your CLS score and bad user experience.

Still, Need Help on How to Fix CLS Issue?

In this post, we shared tips for solving the Cumulative Layout Shift issue. We are happy that Core Web Vitals has brought attention to this annoying problem, which many web developers have overlooked for too long. With the above techniques, you can identify and even improve it. 

However, if you fail to eliminate CLS completely, your efforts will still reduce its impact. You can even give a chance to our Core Web Vitals optimization experts specialize in fixing CLS issues the right way, and watch your CLS score go down to 0. We go beyond surface-level tips and deliver tailored solutions that actually work. 

See what you are signing up for:

1. You get expert assistance to identify the real cause of layout shifts.
2. Your site enjoys faster loading, and you give a stable browsing experience to your users.
3. We improve your Lighthouse and PageSpeed scores.
4. And you save hours of trial and error by letting us handle it for you.

W3SpeedUp is an all-in-one solution to optimize CLS without any technical hassle, so contact us now and experience the difference.

The post How to Fix Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Issue in WordPress & Shopify? appeared first on W3 SpeedUp.

It’s a key metric to measure the speed with which a webpage reacts to user actions. Wanna learn more about it? Read on!

In this article, we’ll explain what INP is, why it is important, and how one can improve it to improve the performance of one’s website. So whether you are a site owner or simply a person who is interested in this issue, this guide will teach the basics of INP!

What is INP?

Interaction to Next Paint, or INP, is a metric used to measure how quickly a website is responding when you click, tap, or type something. It is one of the metrics in Core Web Vitals set by Google and helps in assessing the use of the website in terms of speed and smoothness.

Breaking it down:

• INP Measures Reaction Time: It checks how long it takes for a page to respond after a user has interacted with the page (say, clicked on a link or entered text into a search field).
• Focuses on Responsiveness: The final INP score indicates the degree of the slowest interaction you were able to have with the page, hence giving an idea of the general responsiveness of the page.
• User Experience: The lower the INP score, the healthier the page is in terms of response time. We all love that, right? Quicker responses mean an enhanced experience.

Example:

Imagine you are buying something over the internet, and you have clicked on a certain product. When it takes ages for the details to load, that would translate to a high INP score indicating poor responsiveness. On the other hand, if the information appears instantly on the screen, the INP score will be lower, meaning the experience will be fast and smooth.

You can determine the performance of your website through the INP score:

• Good Responsiveness: INP = 0-200 milliseconds. Your page has good responsiveness.
• Needs Improvement: INP = 200-500 milliseconds. Your page’s responsiveness is okay but needs improvement.
• Poor Responsiveness: INP = 500+ milliseconds. Your page is slow to react and needs serious optimization.

To sum up, INP is a useful metric for webmasters who want to ensure that their websites do not only load quickly but also respond quickly enough to keep the visitors interested and focused.

Factors Affecting INP

When designing a web page, many elements can come into play that would slow down the page’s responsiveness to clicks, taps, or typing. These elements have a major effect on INP.

Here are the key factors that affect INP –

• JavaScript Overload: Too much heavy and complex JavaScript on any web page can highly decrease the page speed. Minimizing this code and optimizing it where possible can greatly improve the response times.
• Slow Network: A poor internet connection prevents a user from accessing a webpage quickly. To improve, use Content Delivery Networks (CDN).
• Server Delays: The processing speed of a server between the request and the output may affect the loading of a specific page. It is possible to make the process faster if there is a powerful and optimized server.
• Page Layout Shifts: Responsiveness can be slow if too many elements move on a web page while loading. Fixing these shifts by reserving space for elements can help.
• Over the Top Design: Pages, which are filled with excessive clutter and complicated designs, take longer to load. Reducing the complexity of the design together with modifying the CSS may increase the speed.
• Third-Party Scripts: External elements, also known as ads, tracking devices, and others, can make any page lag. Limit or modify these scripts to enhance effectiveness.

INP can be enhanced by addressing these factors, and hence, the overall experience of users on the sites will be improved.

How to Improve INP Score

Improving your Interaction with Next Paint (INP) is crucial for the speed and interactivity of your site. Here’s what you can do:

Minimise JavaScript Execution

As already discussed, a website can be degraded by excessive JavaScript. This can be handled by getting rid of unnecessary scripts. A page may have many other things that aren’t important to begin with (for example, animations and tracking scripts), so they can be eliminated. JavaScript execution should also be improved by shrinking the file size and bundling the scripts together to reduce the downloading time.

Optimise Network Performance

There are a number of ways to enhance and improve the loading time of your site; one of them is reducing network latency by using a Content Delivery Network (CDN). In this case, copies of your site’s content are placed in various locations, which makes it easier for users to access your content faster. Also, image optimization is ensured by improving their efficiency through compression with an appropriate quality of the image. Lastly, effective browser caching should be applied so that repeat visitors do not have to download static content such as logos and scripts every time they visit.

Improve Server Response Time

The performance of your server has a direct impact on the response rate of your website. Configure the server properly and ensure it has the appropriate power to handle requests. Use a faster web server, such as Nginx or Apache, and add server-side caching so that the common content is served quickly.

Minimise Layout Shifts

When a page is loading and the layout keeps changing, it can be frustrating, especially when interacting with the page. This can be corrected by providing adequate space using placeholders for dynamic content. This will allow the structure of the page to remain intact even after new elements have loaded. Also, do not load fonts dynamically – instead, use font preloading or asynchronous loading to prevent shifts with fonts.

Optimise Rendering

Speed up website loading by eliminating CSS blocking so that the page can render the content before all the styles are loaded. Doing this will help the page load properly.

Continuously Monitor and Analyze

Improving your website’s INP score isn’t just a one-time thing! Therefore, regularly use some performance monitoring tools to check how well your site is performing. Look at how people use your site and gradually make changes to keep making it better all the time.

Implementation of these basic techniques and methods will contribute greatly towards decreasing the loading time of your website while also improving the experience of the users.

Wrapping UP!

Coming to the end, one thing is certain – a fast and smooth website is quite important to provide a seamless and engaging experience for visitors. Needless to say, understanding INP and how you can improve it can not only help you boost your website’s performance but also create an enhanced experience for your users.

We certainly hope you liked this read and grabbed some essential knowledge to improve your website performance!

Read More: Optimize Core Web Vitals: 5 Ways To Improve User Experience

Read More: Maximizing Website Speed: The Crucial Role Of Technology

The post What is INP? A Complete Guide to Interaction to Next Paint for Faster Websites appeared first on W3 SpeedUp.

Google ranking factors have always been on an evolving ride and still, it is crucial to optimize for Google or other search engines to maintain a position and domain authority higher. While one small trendy change can change the whole algorithm of your website in terms of leads, another insignificant technique could also lose you, potential buyers, or new visitors. So, you would never want to end up with a high bounce rate, Would you? So, you need to know what works best for you.

Don’t worry, we’ve come up with top website optimization strategies and tools to help you out. Being a leading company in WordPress Speed & Performance Optimization, today we are going to show you a range of aspects you need to focus on to achieve a high converting website in every sense. Whether you call it mobile-friendliness, local searches, quality content, or creating a reliable link profile, this guide covers everything you need to know.

1. Optimize Your Website for Fast Page Loading Speed

Optimizing your website for loading time plays a critical role after Google’s recent update on core web vitals has confirmed a major impact of faster web pages on higher traffic or SERP ranking. Thus, a fast page loading speed is one of the most important website optimization strategies in 2024.

Research shows that 40% of the visitors abandon if they find a slow page loading. As a matter of fact, a one-second delay in load can lead to a 7% loss in conversions and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

We have been helping websites load faster and get the most out of their business. That means, there are some best practices that can give you desired results. Whether you have WordPress or an eCommerce site, here are a few tips to make your website faster:

• Optimize images with lossless compression and lazy loading for the smaller sizes.
• Remove Unnecessary plugins
• Minify CSS and JavaScript
• Use CDN
• Enable browser caching
• Reduce redirects
• Reduce server response time with an upgrade to fast web hosting

Check out proven ways to speed up your website and improve conversion for more detail on the subject.

Also, website hosting and maintenance services can help you get your website optimized for speed and performance. Not just for mobile devices, but also for desktop versions.

Moreover, if you are handling WooCommerce, we have a complete guide to know about how to optimize your eCommerce store.

2. Optimize for Local Searches (Local SEO)

When it comes to SEO, often businesses forget to emphasize local searches and intent. In fact, 46% of the Google searches have local intent. You can optimize your blogs, videos, or products for local searches because Local SEO has become the best website optimization strategy in 2024.

Basically, there are 4 types of search intent i.e., informational, commercial, navigational, and transactional. If you wish to optimize for local searchers you can address all types of intent on your website.

Either way, you can hire experts to do Local SEO for you. We have a talented & skilled team of Local SEO professionals to do it for you.

3. Ensure Mobile-Friendly Web Page

Mobile searches have been increasing exponentially with an increase in mobile users. If your website content or web pages are created as per desktop viewers, it’s your time to upgrade for mobile usability.

You can take advantage of a handful of practices with mobile-first indexing. Here are some of them:

• Create responsive designs. A responsive website simply means allowing your images or other elements to look perfect on all devices according to the size of the screens. This ensures easy user interaction.
• Ensure the right character length of meta titles.
• Remove unwanted pop-ups or redirects to prevent a reduction in user experience
• Don’t use the mobile version for cloaking. That means, whatever your content or URL is, it 

  matches all types of devices in the same way whether it is desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

4. User Experience

Providing the best user experience has become one of the most important factors after core web vitals update came into the spotlight. Thus, you need to optimize your website for user experience. UX optimization requires analyzing user behavior, gathering user data insights, and understanding their needs & wants. Heatmaps, user flow, & session recordings are some great ways to help you in analysis.

Your website UX is not only limited to images or compelling designs but also includes its loading speed and overall performance.

Research shows that 88% of the users end up returning back if they found any website having a poor experience.

So, what really makes a user experience best? Almost everything from speed, quality of content, and whatnot. Here are some of the effective ways to provide a quality user experience:

• Fast and Easy Navigation: Site navigation is the process of browsing your website elements and different locations as smoothly as possible. The better your user’s browsing, the higher will be their satisfaction.  
• Unique Content: Content is king but what makes a content quality top-notch is its uniqueness. Original content is priceless. You need to ensure your team of content writing comprises talented individuals with best-in-class language command and in-depth research abilities.
• Responsive Design: Responsiveness has huge importance in the era of mobile users. Make sure your website is accessible on all devices, desktops, smartphones, and tablets. A responsive website is more likely to convert mere users into potential customers.
• Value Your Past Clients: The best way to value your previous clients and customers is to add a separate section of their reviews, or ask them for feedback on your products or services. Reviews also help your new prospects trust you faster.
• Display Your Professionalism: To be a pro in the industry implies displaying your credible certifications.

5. Optimize for Voice Search

Voice searches have been increasing at a fast pace and it will stay one of the best website optimization strategies or trends in 2024 and years coming. Voice searches are preferable to typing to conduct queries since one can use long-form of phrases or queries. So, it is best to optimize your website content for voice searches.

Long Tail Keywords with more than 3 words are most likely searchable for voices. Another tip you can take into place is to use structured data or schema. Schema markup helps search engines to better understand the information of your web pages.

6. Optimize speed & performance with Core Web Vitals:

Core web vital optimization is crucial to get speedy web pages and better performance. With a new algorithm update on user experience, Google ensures a great significance of core web vitals as the speed & performance determining factors.

You can evaluate the health of your core web vitals using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Google Search Console. Being a leading company in website speed optimization, we would recommend you to focus on responsiveness, visual stability, and loading speed of your web pages to get a positive impact on your four metrics i.e., FCP, LCP, FID, and CLS.

7. Link Building:

When it comes to off-page SEO, building authoritative backlinks is still important to make the best out of your long-term SEO strategy. The higher will be your number of backlinks to your web pages, the higher will be the chance of ranking on the relevant SERPs.

While quality link profile positively impacts the web page ranking, non-credible could even hurt it.

Here are some of the link building strategies that you can include:

• Fix broken links
• Use Resource Pages
• Link Mining
• Claim Unlinked Mentions
• Reclaim links

Make sure to use A/B testing that can help you know which form of the page has more likelihood to rank higher.

FAQs

The post Top 7 Website Optimization Strategies (Best Techniques) appeared first on W3 SpeedUp.

However, a lot of WordPress site owners unintentionally make mistakes that reduce their Core Web Vitals rankings, resulting in slower load times and a less enjoyable user experience. This makes it essential for them to optimize core web vitals for WordPress. 

We’ll look at these frequent mistakes in this blog and offer practical methods to Optimize Core Web Vitals on WordPress sites.

 How do Themes Affect Core Web Vitals and User Experience?

The Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of a website can be considerably impacted by the WordPress theme selection. Slow loading times and decreased engagement can be caused by themes that are badly designed, have too many features, and are not optimized.

Bloated Themes and Loading Speeds

Many feature-rich themes have several pre-designed components, intricate animations, and too-long scripts. Despite being aesthetically beautiful, these components may cause a website’s loading time to increase, which will negatively impact the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score. Choose lightweight themes that prioritise efficiency and simplicity without sacrificing beauty to reduce loading times.

Impact on Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) 

A low Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) score can be caused by themes with erratic layouts or components that move around while the page loads. Users may find this annoying, especially when using mobile devices. To reduce CLS and offer a fluid visual experience, use themes with reliable and responsive designs.

Performance and code quality 

The performance of a website can be substantially impacted by themes with inefficient code. Higher First Input Delay (FID) ratings and a less responsive user interface might result from scripts that take a long time to load, utilise excessive amounts of CSS, and add superfluous code. FID may be enhanced and a better user experience can be achieved by selecting themes with clear and effective code.

 Methods To Optimise Core Web Vitals for WordPress Website

1. Choosing Lightweight Themes and Frameworks 

Core Web Vitals must be optimised, thus it’s crucial to use lightweight frameworks and themes that put performance first and adhere to proper development practices.

2. Evaluate Theme Performance 

Use internet tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or RabbitLoader to evaluate the performance of several themes before making your decision. Choose themes with a high-performance rating and quick loading times.

3. Mobile Device Optimisation 

Themes that are not mobile device optimized may cause slower loading times on smartphones and tablets. Core Web Vitals scores may be impacted by mobile users’ high LCP and low interaction. For improved mobile performance, make sure the theme you choose is completely responsive and offers a smooth experience across different devices.

4. Minimizing External Requests 

Reduce the number of queries sent to external servers by using lightweight themes and frameworks, which frequently have fewer external dependencies. When it comes to the Total Blocking Time (TBT) statistic in particular, this can result in quicker loading times and higher Core Web Vitals ratings.

5. Regular Updates and Support 

Select themes and frameworks with frequent updates and active developer support. The latest performance optimisation techniques are more likely to be followed by themes that are up-to-date, resulting in greater plugin compatibility and enhanced website speed.

Using Plugins to Improve Performance

Using plugins like RabbitLoader, an all-in-one speed optimisation plugin, is one of the most efficient methods to improve performance and optimise Core Web Vitals on WordPress websites.

1. Intelligent Script Loading 

To lessen render-blocking and speed up loading, RabbitLoader intelligently controls script loading, including jQuery deferral, which benefits FID and LCP scores.

2. Image Optimization 

To lessen render-blocking and speed up loading, RabbitLoader intelligently controls script loading, including jQuery deferral, which benefits FID and LCP scores.

3. Lazy Loading 

Images may be loaded slowly with the help of RabbitLoader, loading them just as they enter the user’s viewport. This shortens the time it takes for the website to load completely and raises the CLS rating.

In A Nutshell

For WordPress websites to provide a quick and smooth user experience while enhancing search engine rankings, Core Web Vitals must be optimized. Avoiding typical mistakes can have a big influence on website speed, such as utilizing bloated themes, skipping mobile optimization, and using plugins incorrectly. 

For a better user experience and higher Core Web Vitals ratings on their WordPress sites, site owners may choose lightweight themes, prioritize mobile optimization, and employ speed optimization plugins like RabbitLoader.

The post How to Optimize Core Web Vitals for WordPress Website appeared first on W3 SpeedUp.

While there are speed analysis tools available to help you get the recommendations, you must be wondering if by any chance you would know how Ads Affect Core Web Vitals and what you as a publisher can do about it.

Impact of Ads on Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Ads may cause layout shifts on the web pages because they load asynchronously. That means the user’s browser fetches the ads while the rest of the page continues loading the content.

If your webpage will be left without sufficient space for ads, they can shift the content on the page, resulting in a bad user experience.

On the other hand, a responsive web page helps you to avoid invalid clicks and keeps you away from a double click penalty.

Shifts in the layout (of content, images, or any other embedded element) can happen due to various reasons. Let’s discuss some of them here:

How to reduce the impact of CLS?

Before reducing the impact of CLS, you’ll need to find out what’s causing it. Here are a few reasons for CLS and how to resolve them: 

1. Expanding or collapsing an ad slot (based on its configuration) when displaying the ad. Many publishers use the collapseEmptyDivs () function to collapse the ad slots when there is no ad to display. This results in layout shifts when ads appear on the page. To reduce CLS due to collapsed slots, use the Google Ad Manager Historical report to know the fill rate of ad slots. Once you know when your slots get filled, you’ll need to arrange the ad slots in a certain way. The ad slots that are more likely to be filled should always start out ‘expanded’ and the ad slots that are unlikely to be filled should start out ‘collapsed’.

2. Adding fluid ad slots on the webpage can also cause shifts in the layout. Fluid ad slots don’t specify a fixed set of ad sizes and therefore automatically resize to fit the ad creative. So, ad space can’t be reserved for the fluid ad slots prior to requesting ad content. So, mitigating layout shift due to fluid ads can be done by using the fluid size for ad slots that are below the fold and fetching the fluid ad slot as soon as possible so that by the time users view the ad slot, it is already resized.

3. Since layout shifts can be voided by reserving enough space for an ad slot, this method doesn’t fit the multiple-size ad slots. Adding multi-size ad slots on the webpage works well with the static ad slots. For multi-size ads, it is recommended to reserve space for the largest ad size and for the ads that most likely to be served.

Impact of Ads on First Input Delay (FID)

FID measures the interactivity of the web page. Every publisher has the basic interactive elements on their website to interact with. The interactions could be anything like scrolling, a drop-down menu, or zooming in and out.

Display ads can be responsive static ads, animation ads,s or video ads. Such ads require user interaction. When the third-party ad codes block the rendering of your web page or take more time to render the ad, the website FID score results in a poor score.

How to reduce the impact of FID?

Your FID scores can be affected by the delay in the third-party JavaScript execution. Interaction latency is one of the major causes of poor FID. Here are a few solutions to help you reduce the impact of FID due to third-party JavaScript:

1. Remove unused JavaScript codes – Serving ads includes third-party ad tags which can keep your website’s network busy resulting in the execution delay of third-party JavaScript. This leads to an increase in the interaction latency and hence unresponsive pages. To mitigate this, you’ll need to remove third-party JavaScript. Among the hundreds of JavaScript libraries on a website, you’ll find some unused JavaScript. In order to improve your FID score, reduce latency by removing unused JavaScript codes. You can use Page Speed Insights to identify the opportunities and find out unnecessary elements contributing to the latency and remove them.

2. Lazy loading optimization – Lazy loading is one of the proven methods to improve page speed and core web vitals. Lazy loading allows loading of the interactive part of the web page on the screen and reduces the loading of the off-screen hidden elements. By implementing lazy loading, you can prioritize the loading of the ads. That means the ads below the fold will load after the ads in the visible area of the screen.

3. Load ad tags asynchronously – Synchronous loading of ad tags doesn’t allow faster loading of both ads and content. Thus, it is always recommended to load third-party scripts asynchronously. To do this, you can use the “async” attribute to load Google publisher tags

Read Also: 7 Effective Techniques to Speed Up WordPress Website Instantly

Impact of Ads on Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP is the core web vital that measures the time taken by the largest element of the web page to render. This metric will be affected if any of your display or video ad ATF takes more time to render. For instance, if an ad will be placed above the fold of a webpage having a size larger than other elements, then the LCP of your web page will be affected. Moreover, publishers try to make sure their ads must load as fast as possible so that the visitors can view or click on the ad before any other element on the page.

However, if the website has a header bidding auction, this will lead to higher LCP with an increase in the loading because some resources of your website’s network will be occupied with the auction. As a result, loading of the more important content of the page will be affected, increasing the LCP.

How to reduce the impact of LCP?

If a website has a large ad appearing above the fold, move it to below the fold to ensure it loads faster. Make sure your header bidding auction doesn’t increase the response time. You can find solutions to ensure fast page loading while running your header bidding auctions.

Conclusion

As you have seen how site speed scores and core web vitals get affected by the ads. To optimize Ads that Affect Core Web Vitals, you’ll need a better understanding of the user experience and ads. The provided suggestions and solutions can only be done through well-versed technical knowledge to obtain the required results and maintain core web vital scores.

If you still aren’t able to pass the core web vitals assessment or you don’t have the required knowledge to do so, get in touch with w3speedup to help you out. 

FAQs

1. What are Core Web Vitals?

Core web vitals are the performance metrics to measure user experience in terms of loading, interactivity, and visual stability which contributes to the ranking signals of search engines. There are 4 core web vitals including LCP, FCP, FID, and CLS in order for you to maintain high performance.

2. Why should publishers care about Core Web Vitals?

Core web vitals not only affects the rank of the site but also its page speed score. Thus, the faster a website will load, the more ad revenue will be generated. According to a survey done by AdSense, the website with 5 seconds or less loading generated more revenue than the website with 19 seconds of loading time.

3. Do Ads affect SEO?

Display ads can disrupt the user experience if the quality of the ads appears poor. Also, pop-up ads can harm your site when they appear too frequently or are designed in a way that the visitor can’t close them easily, this can hurt the user experience and your SEO. Intrusive interstitial ads are one of the factors considered by Google which could potentially lower the ranking of a website.

The post How Ads Affect Core Web Vitals and Speed Scores? appeared first on W3 SpeedUp.

Your SERP hugely depends on these web performance metrics ranging from a website’s speed to its performance. And, if you are an online business, your sales, conversions or merely digital marketing practices will most likely get affected by how long your site takes to serve web content on multiple devices.

There you need to analyze certain technical issues and optimize core web vitals as soon as you know the inevitable connection between fast page speed and buyer’s journey.

Don’t know what to do? You have come to the right place because this post is all need to know how to perform core web vitals optimization. Before you know how to improve them, let’s first understand what the four web vitals are.

What are core web vitals and why they are important?

There are four core web vitals including:

1. FCP (First Contentful Paint):–

FCP is the metric that measures the time from the start of page loading until it renders any part of the page content on the user’s screen.

A fast FCP score is like the first ray of hope for your users that helps them believe in what you are going to provide and what they are going to get in the first place. The faster the page loading speed, the better will be your FCP score.

Whereas, the more delayed your first piece of content will be, the higher will be chances of experiencing a huge bounce rate. We have a complete guide on how to improve FCP.

2. LCP (Largest Contentful Paint):–

LCP metric measures the render time of the largest content being visible to the users when the page starts first loading.

A good FCP time is sometimes not enough. For instance, if your website shows a splash screen or loading indicator during the initial phase of loading, it will be not helpful for users. Therefore, LCP plays a more crucial role in retaining users on your website than FCP.

You need to make sure a speedy largest content loading of a web page of around 3-4 seconds to gain your user’s attention.

3. FID (First Input Delay):–

FID is the user interactivity metric that measures the phase between user first interaction with your website such as clicking on a link or tapping on a button until the time when browser responds to the result of the user’s interaction.

Achieving a great first impression is a blessing for websites. FID also helps in building the first impression in terms of responsiveness.

A responsive web design can help you build trust among your customers. It makes your site mobile-friendly, improves the way it looks on different devices, and increases the amount of time that visitors spend on your site. This will eventually help you improve your rankings in search engines.

4. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift):–

CLS is a measure of every unexpected layout shift that occurs during the entire lifespan of a page. A layout shift occurs any time a visible element changes its position from one place to the next.

A sudden change while reading an article or purchasing a product is the worst case that users can expect. Whether you see content text move or you’ve lost your place while clicking a link or a button, a shift at any point of your web page can end up resulting in a bad user experience. Therefore, CLS gives users an assured way of ensuring the visual stability of a web page.

Top 5 Ways to Optimize Core Web Vitals

To optimize, Core web vitals use these best practices suggested by Google Page Speed Insight, GTmetrix, or other tools where you’ve measured your web performance and speed. Each website is different and requires different areas of concern. Thus, always analyze your specific problems before implementing any optimizations.

Here are 5 tried and tested ways to optimize core web vitals:

1. Reduce JavaScript execution:

Reducing javascript execution can help you improve FID. If your report shows a poor FID score, that means your users might be interacting with a web page at over 300 milliseconds. This can be improved by reducing and optimizing your JS execution.

As a result, the time between your browser executing JS code and rendering page will get reduced.

It’s also helpful to use as little memory as you can because when your site’s code requests the browser, it reserves a new memory that stops the JavaScript and might slow down the page.

One of the techniques to reduce JS execution according to Google is by deferring unused JS.

2. Implement lazy loading:

Do you use lots of images on your website? Make sure you’ve implemented lazy loading so that your site’s UX and core web vitals score won’t get harmed. Lazy loading allows the loading of images, animations, or videos only when users interact with them or at the moment when users scroll down through the page.

It does not compromise the website’s loading speed and help you achieve a high LCP score.

There are more benefits to lazy loading than just speeding up your page loading, here are some of them:

• It will improve your site’s performance.
• It will limit bandwidth usage.
• will boost your site’s SEO.
• It will reduce the bounce rate and help retain your visitors on the page.

Pages containing many heavy elements like images, animations, or videos, lazy loading is a must. However, there are no set rules for which pages lazy loading should be implemented.

So, if you are getting poor LCP, try implementing lazy loading and witness the positive results provided.

3. Optimize Your Website Images

Images are the largest elements of the content of some websites that don’t upload videos. Using informative images and designs is worthy of user attention but they must be optimized for fast loading time and better performance.

Image optimization carries huge importance and a variety of practices that make your page significantly lighter, improve LCP score, UX and ranking.

You can also reduce the page size by compressing images using any image compression software. Always consider using jpg format for landscape images and png for graphics. You can also use next-generation image formats such as JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, or WebP.

Apart from compressing your site images, there is another important factor to image optimization i.e. activating Content Delivery Network (CDN) for images.

CDN is a created network of servers all around the world that store your web content. Now that you have implemented CDN, distributed servers will render your images faster from the server closest to users.

4. Set proper dimensions for images and embeds

CLS score over 0.1 is considered poor, and usually, it is caused by elements like images, ads, or embeds without setting proper dimensions in the CSS file.

So, if you want to improve your CLS score, dimensions do matter. By giving proper width and height to your images or other embeds, the browser will help set the correct amount of spacing on the page while the element is loading.

For instance, with improper image size & dimensions, your site may experience layout shift or images may appear later on a page.

Apart from slow loading, the browser finds it hard to understand the needed space of that page. As a result, it immediately reduces the user’s experience.

So, in order to avoid this image shift, set the dimensions and provide a perfect space where the image should be displayed. Also, ensure setting dimensions of other embeds like videos according to what it requires, thereby preventing both front-end and back-end issues.

5. Speed up your server response time

The longer the browser takes to receive content from the server, the longer your site takes to render anything on the user end.

A faster server response time is directly connected to every single core web vital or metric. Google recommends server response times lower than 600 milliseconds.

Most importantly, long server response time not only affects UX but also SEO.

Time to First Byte (TTFB) is one such major metric that indicates the quality of server response time. TTFB measures the time when your user’s web browser receives the first byte of your page’s content.

So, it is good to gather data on your server’s current performance before you start and act accordingly.

Moreover, each plugin comes with additional CSS and scripts that add up to your page TTFB which negatively impacts your site’s performance.

So, take a look at the tips that will help you speed up your server response time, it includes, reviewing your plugins, checking how fast is your web hosting, and using CDN for your site.

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Faqs About Core Web Vitals

#1. What are Core Web Vitals in SEO?

Google Core Web Vitals are a measurable set of SEO performance metrics that measures and provide insights on your website user experience in terms of loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability. Specific data points show respective areas of optimization where LCP & FCP measure loading time, CLS give visual stability and FID tells the interactivity of a page.

#2.  Are there three Core Web Vitals or four?

Google PSI used to consider three metrics as core web vitals in the past i.e. LCP, FID, and CLS for site performance improvements. However, according to a new update of Google PageSpeed Insights, we can now see four core web vitals with the addition of FCP in the list.

#3. Where can you find your Core Web Vitals Score?

The best way to check your core web vitals score and analyze other performance-related issues is to test your website on reliable testing platforms like Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, Pingdom, etc.

#4. How does your performance score affect your search ranking?

A good core web vitals score boosts SEO, which eventually improves your search ranking. Since loading speed, responsiveness, and visual stability matter for a good user experience, Google always pushes those websites higher in search engine result positions which provide good UX and excellent performance.

#5. What is Ideal Core Web Vitals Score?

To pass the core web vitals assessment of Google PSI, your website should meet the ideal score on individual metrics. The ideal score for LCP is 2.5 seconds or less, FCP must be within 1.8 seconds or less, a good CLS score is 0.1 or lower and A good FID score is 100 milliseconds or less.

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Ideally, FCP below 1 second is considered to be an excellent score and almost all sites strive for this timing to optimize the overall performance. Your first contentful paint (FCP) wordpress website can come down to this time by optimizing the content and other resources required to load pages.

Moreover, FCP of less than 2 seconds can get a green rating from Google. As a website owner, you should aim for an FCP of less than 2 seconds to pass Google’s Web Vitals test. 

In order to improve first contentful paint, we have incorporated some strategies and practices to improve our own and many client’s website FCP score on Google Page speed Insights. Here in this blog post we are going to focus on that step-by-step process of improving FCP. However, before directly jumping to what to do for the first contentful paint wordpress fix, let’s briefly understand What is FCP and how it is important to secure higher google rank?

What is First contentful paint & its importance?

Your website visitors always first get an exposure of the content. The time under which your web page content displays on the screen of the visitor is defined as the first contentful paint. In simple words, FCP is a time that starts from the beginning of the page loading to the point when the page renders the first piece of content.

The faster the information being served to the visitor, the better your website FCP will be. Fast First contentful paint not only helps your website to rank better in the SERP but also allows you to lower down the bounce rate. According to the research, Google pushes those websites higher in the search who have low first contentful paint (fcp) site score. As a result, you are more likely to generate huge web traffic & ultimately, increase conversion rates.

How to improve First Contentful Paint (FCP)

First contentful paint can be fixed by optimizing your content, images, and other resources which takes time to load your pages. By improving FCP time, your website will tend to rank higher in the SERPs. Fixing FCP issues is one of the important ways to speed up your website and get assured conversions.

Here are the 7 steps you can apply to reduce your FCP time under 1 second:

1. Create website caching

To reduce the workload of your website server, caching is the best way to do it. Caching helps in generating a copy of your website and being served to the next users. 

You don’t need to create pages from scratch for each new user. Thus, it is an easy way to fast your FCP timing & boost your website performance.

2. Reduce TTFB

If your TTPB i.e. time to first byte is improved, your slow FCP time can be fixed. Oftentimes, TTFB is replaced with “server response time” as both mean the same. It is the time of the browser to deliver the first byte of the webpage content. FCP has a huge dependence on the TTFB score on Google Page speed Insights.

If you operate a website where it is hosted, the server response time or TTFB is around 0.1 – 0.2 seconds whereas internationally, TTFB can increase up to 0.5 seconds.

Since, in case of native users, the data is traveling less distance, & eventually the faster & better the TTFB timing will be.

Either way, using a fast hosting provider can also be your solution to get a fast TTFB time.

3. Minimize Javascript and CSS

Unnecessary JavaScript and CSS files loads a website. Therefore, here your goal should be to minimize the JavaScript and CSS to get a fast FCP timing. It implies clearing the whitespace and invaluable codes. You can also take help of javascript-minifier.com and cssminifier.com to get optimized files.

Another technique you can make use of is to defer the loading of JavaScript. This way you can let JavaScript files to load last. Consequently, they won’t block your content from rendering quickly.

4. Compress Logo Image size

Large size of the logo image must be compressed in order to get better FCP time. You can choose compression tools to optimize the size of the logo for FCP. The ideal size of the logo we recommend would be around 5-10 kb.

However, while helping businesses to speed up websites, most of them were having a much bigger logo file size. So, we consider logo large size a crucial factor behind low FCP score & it needs to be taken care of.

5. Reduce Web Page DOM Size

 DOM stands for Document Object Model of the page. DOM is created while your web page loads. It helps in making a connection between the programming languages and pages. Having small DOM means fast first contentful paint time, as it is making browsers easier to read.

However, reducing the size of DOM is not an easy process. Lazy loading of HTML elements & images, creating page sections for comments, posts, products and removing unwanted CSS can help you reduce DOM size quickly.

6. Fix 404 errors

If your website has pages that show 404 errors, they are probably causing problems to render your content on time. Thus, you need to fix all the 404 errors as soon as possible to resolve low FCP timing.

7. Avoid multiple page redirects

Redirects slow down loading speed of the web pages and it especially affects FCP. Browsers usually request resources to redirect a page and the server usually returns with a 301 response.

For that, the browser must make another request to retrieve the resource at the new location. As a result, this can delay the loading of the resource by hundreds of milliseconds.

Feeling Annoyed by High FCP? W3Speedup is Here to Help

W3speedup has come up with the most successful plugin to improve your FCP, LCP, FID, CLS and other critical aspects of a slow website. You want to know what it is! W3Speedster is our warrior and an ultimate solution to fix WordPress first contentful paint. It will find all the issues and help you boost your website loading speed to make it under 2 seconds.

W3Speedster have optimized over 5000 WordPress websites to load at a lightning speed. Now, It’s your time to get it done. Fill out your form today and get your FCP improved instantly.

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