Google shares an updated set of recommendations for optimizing Core Web Vitals to help you decide what to prioritize when time is tight.
Core Web Vitals are three metrics that measure load time, interactivity, and visual stability.
Google considers these metrics essential to providing a positive experience and uses them to rank websites in its search results.
Over the years, Google has provided numerous suggestions for improving Core Web Vitals scores.
While every single Google recommendation is worth implementing, the company realizes it’s unrealistic to expect someone to do everything.
If you don’t have a lot of experience with website performance optimization, it can be challenging to figure out what will have the most significant impact.
You may not know where to start with limited time to spend improving Core Web Vitals. That’s where Google’s revised list of recommendations comes into play.
In a blog post, Google says the Chrome team spent a year trying to identify the most important advice you can give regarding Core Web Vitals.
The team came up with a list of recommendations that are realistic for most developers, applicable to most websites, and have significant real-world impact.
This is what Google’s Chrome team advises.
Larger Content Painting (LCP) Optimization
The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric measures the time it takes for the main content of a page to become visible to users.
Google claims that only about half of all websites meet the recommended LCP threshold.
These are Google’s top recommendations for improving LCP.
Make sure the LCP resource is easily found in the HTML source
According to the HTTP Archive’s Web Almanac 2022, 72% of mobile web pages have an image as their primary content. To improve LCP, websites need to ensure that images load quickly.
It may be impossible to meet Google’s LCP threshold if a page waits for CSS or JavaScript files to fully download, parse, and render before the image can begin to load.
As a general rule, if the LCP element is an image, the image URL should always be detectable from the HTML source.
Make sure the LCP resource has priority
In addition to having the LCP resource in the HTML code, Google recommends prioritizing it and not falling behind other, less critical resources.
Even if you have included your LCP image in the HTML source using a standard label, if there are several