Does your website pass the Core Web Vitals assessment?
Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world metrics that Google rolled out on mobile websites in August’21 (with plans to roll out to desktop sites in January-February’22. These metrics are used to measure key aspects of user experience when loading a webpage such as a website’s loading, interactivity and visual stability. All three are related to site speed in one way or another.
Google aims is to make ensure that all the websites included in its index offers users the best possible experience. By making Core Web Vitals a ranking factor, Google is forcing website owners to focus more on the user experience (UX). Google will reward sites that offer a better landing page experience with higher search visibility.
The metrics(supplied by Chrome User Experience (CrUX) Reports – that Google will use to measure key aspects of user experience when loading a web page such as a website’s loading, interactivity and visual stability. All three are related to site speed in one way or another. In addition to being signals for Google scoring, Google is considering labelling search results with symbols to indicate pages with good or bad CWV scores. The assessment should include recommendations on how to ensure that the site receives a good CWV score.
The Core Web Vitals assessment includes the following:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measure of the overall loading speed of a page – the faster the page loads the better. It’s marked in the timeline when the majority of content is loaded in.
First Input Delay (FID): Measure responsiveness to user interactions. For instance, if a user clicks a link, or selects a dropdown – how quickly will that action be executed on the page. Usually, user interactions will be delayed when a browser is busy executing other tasks.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measure the stability of a URL as it loads. We’ve all had that frustrating experience of reading a news site and having the article text jump lower as the navigation is loaded, and CLS is a measure of that across a whole page.
In addition to being signals for Google scoring, Google is considering labelling search results with symbols to indicate pages with good or bad CWV scores. Each Web Vital must be benchmarked by three classifications; Good, Needs Improvement, and Poor. For a page to ‘pass’ the Core Web Vital Assessment it must be considered ‘Good’ in all three metrics.
Our Technical SEO Expertise
BlueMagnet is recognised as one of the most experienced Technical SEO companies in South Africa. For the past 15 years, we have trained many SEO professionals and agencies in South Africa, as well as to a number of global multi-national enterprises on the many benefits of technical search engine optimisation as part of a collaborative SEO strategy.
Achieving SEO success on Google requires an in-depth knowledge of Google Search Console, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and the Google Quality Raters Guidelines; as well as extensive insight into Google’s latest algorithm updates and how to interpret the SEO industries esteemed SEO Periodic Table.
Our advanced SEO techniques has assisted our many clients in achieving outstanding organic rankings and visibility on Google, not only due to our extensive knowledge of the many benefits and features applied through advanced technical website optimisation, but largely as a result of our uniquely designed collaborative approach to our client’s overarching Digital Marketing SEO Strategy.
Our Website Migration Specialists are experienced in managing complex global enterprise-level website migrations with the highest level of success and minimal disruption to your SEO performance. If you are moving, upgrading or revamping your website or doing a complete website overhaul, our migration specialists will ensure a smooth migration that will result in little to no negative impact on the user’s experience, your Google rankings, web traffic and conversions.
When is migration planning necessary?
SEO Migration Plan
If not properly managed and planned, a website Migration could result in a drop in Google rankings, a loss of traffic and ultimately a loss of revenue. The purpose of a proper migration plan is to minimise this risk. Our team of usability and search analysts have expert knowledge and extensive experience in the creation of and migration to a secure or responsive websites. We will prepare a comprehensive migration plan for your website in order to provide migration guidelines to the developers in respect to the migration process.
Post Migration Impact Analysis
As part of our migration planning services, we conduct in-depth checks for up to six months post-migration – benchmarked against key metrics recorded pre-migration – to measure the impact of the migration against carefully selected metrics. We review the impact on domain authority, rankings, website traffic, conversions and revenue to the business.
Learn more about how BlueMagnet can assist you in achieving a seamless website migration with minimal impact on your organic search traffic.
We conduct a comprehensive Website SEO Audit to identify any areas that might be holding your website back from achieving maximum visibility in Google’s index. Using advanced SEO tools (such as Google Search Console, SEMRush, aHrefs, Screaming Frog, Web CEO, Sitebulb, and others) and specialist testing techniques to analyse and diagnose your website. We identify all the critical SEO issues, as well as other obstacles that might be preventing your website from achieving optimal Google rankings.
We are on top of the latest algorithms updates, and our technical SEO analysts are dedicated towards remaining up-to-date on the latest search trends and cutting edge implementations. Combining the science of Search Engine Optimisation and the art of User Experience Optimisation our team of usability and search analysts have expert knowledge and extensive experience in the creation of Google compliant responsive websites that are built to drive higher conversions In addition to complying with Google’s best practices, our highly qualified search engine optimisation analysts are experience in implementing a number of advanced SEO techniques to elevate your website’s performance to the next level.
Learn more about how BlueMagnet’s SEO Analysts can assist with a comprehensive SEO audit for your website.
Hreflang tags are a technical solution for sites that have similar content in multiple languages. The owner of a multilingual site wants search engines to send people to the content in their own language. Say a user is Germany and the page that ranks is English, but there is also a German version. You would want Google to show the German page in the search results for that user. Hreflang mark-up has been designed for this solution.
It does not matter whether the content you have resides on one domain or multiple domains. You can link variations within the same domain but can also link between domains.
SEO Benefits of hreflang Implementation:
From an SEO point of view, there are two main reasons why you should implement it.
- If you have a version of a page that you have optimised for the users’ language and location, you want them to land on that page.Having the right language and location dependent information improves their user experience and thus leads to fewer people bouncing back to the search results. Fewer people bouncing back to the search results leads to higher rankings.
- The second reason is that hreflang prevents the problem of duplicate content. If you have the same content in English on different URLs aimed at the UK, the US, and Germany (their might be subtle differences on these pages such as contact details, price or currency). Without hreflang, Google might not understand what you are trying to do and see it as duplicate content. With hreflang, you make it very clear to the search engine that it’s (almost) the same content, just optimised for different people.
How Hreflang works:
In a hreflang implementation, every URL specifies which other variations are available. When a user searches, Google goes through the following process:
- it determines that it wants to rank a URL;
- it checks whether that URL has hreflang annotations;
- it presents the searcher with the results with the most appropriate URL for that user.
The user’s current location and language settings determine the most appropriate URL. A user can have multiple languages in his browser’s settings.
Learn more about how BlueMagnet can assist you with your International hreflang SEO Implementation.
Crawl Budget is the number of pages that Googlebot cawls and indexes on a website within a given timeframe. Search engines have a limited amount of resources that can be used to crawl through a site to catalogue and index the content.
If the number of pages exceeds the site’s crawl budget, there may be pages that will not get indexed or refreshed in the index. If pages don’t get indexed they will not appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs). If pages already in the index aren’t re-indexed regularly, they may lose recency and relevance and start declining in their SERP rankings.
Poor site structure (such as incorrect pagination and interlinking) may prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your site. Your crawl budget can also be adversely affected by duplicate content on your site, or incorrect or conflicting canonicalisation. Site speed can also have an impact on your site’s crawlability.
Wasting crawl budget can seriously impact your pages’ visibility in the SERPs, and in turn, severely affect your other SEO efforts.
If you want your website to perform well in Google’s organic listings, then you will need to ensure that your site loads fast and passes Google’s Core Web Vitals scores.
Google has defined some optimal benchmarks for websites to optimise towards, which serve as a measurement of speed and performance. Google Page Speed measures the time taken from the moment a website is requested to the point when it is rendered and ready for input in the browser and scores the website according to how fast it is. Google’s Page Speed score includes several measurements for page-load experience. These are also classified as the Core Web Vitals and they include:
- Time to First Byte (TTFB): The time between calling up the website and the first byte loaded by the web server.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): The time at which a display element is displayed in the browser for the first time.
- First Meaningful Paint (FMP): The time at which the user perceives the website to be loaded.
- Time to Interactive (TTI): The time at which the website has been rendered and is ready for user input.
The weightings of these scores fluctuate from time to time, however it is important that your website is continuously optimised to deliver the best possible user experience across both desktop and mobile devices should you want to rank well on Google.
If you have a slow website, it will certainly perform poorly in the search engine results pages.
Find out how BlueMagnet can assist you in boosting your site’s speed performance and pass the Core Web Vitals.
Why Choose BlueMagnet as your Technical SEO Partner
Trusted By:
Gillian (CEO of BlueMagnet) is one of those extra-ordinary people you meet in life that truly makes an impact and adds value. I have worked with Gillian as a colleague and as a service provider and she always delivers comprehensive expert advice, simply, on time, and with a friendly smile. I have had the pleasure of dealing with her team now and she has managed to pass on those same traits to them. If you are looking for assistance to optimise your digital assets (from auditing your sites, to optimising them, especially from a search point of view, all the way to training your staff to empower them to do the same), then I have found no better person to turn to than Gillian and her team at BlueMagnet.
BlueMagnet has been an asset to our company. Their expertise has helped to grow the Property management division. We have proven results over a short time and cannot thank her enough. BlueMagnet’s knowledge of SEO and Google Adwords Management is second to none. We are proud to recommend them as am SEO specialist and Google Adword Campaign Manager.
BlueMagnet is a true expert in their field. In the murky waters of SEO and Adwords services in SA, they stand clean and clear above the competition. If you want to get the real deal from someone who knows the ins and outs of this dynamic field of expertise, BlueMagnet is your answer.
In a marketing specialisation so often characterised by smoke and mirrors, BlueMagnet cuts right to the point with expert, effective advice and strategic guidance. The campaign they managed was refreshingly efficient, and they have been great to work with.
BlueMagnet migrated content for our multilingual web platform to a new site. The migration improved market exposure, drove new inquiries, and tripled the number of keywords ranking in search engines. BlueMagnet communicated well and executed under a hard deadline. They’re a reliable partner with useful technical knowledge. They have such incredible people working at their company that you certainly feel that your website is in good hands.
A very big thank you from the Elingo team to BlueMagnet for the Discovery Workshop conducted on Friday. The feedback from our team has been amazing, and exactly what they were looking for. Very Professional and Fun!
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