Google Releases Core Web Vitals Audit Strategy

Ever since Google launched Core Web Vitals (CWV), it has been a popular topic among those in the SEO community. SEO audit companies try to learn how to optimise, measure, and report on these new metrics. Google’s Web.Dev website helps online businesses and developers by recommending a specific workflow for a site’s CWV SEO audit and assisting them in planning optimisation strategies.

Google’s advice comes with a list of many helpful tools and factors to consider to keep the approach as smooth-running and efficient as possible.

The ABC Approach To CWV Audit Workflows

Google refers to this as the “Web Vitals Loop” and recommends that auditors take the approaches below:

• Approach A – assess web health and distinguish pain points
• Approach B – debug and optimise underperforming web pages
• Approach C – keep on monitoring and developing

Each approach has its own suggested tools and questions to answer.

Approach A (Evaluation And Identification)

Google advises SEO audit companies to ask themselves the following questions at this stage of the audit to keep the process focused:

• What are the pages, metrics, and devices one should prioritise?
• What is the site’s performance, and does it need attention?
• Did things get better or worse recently?

Next, Google recommends the following tools to help online businesses and audit companies perform the highest quality audit possible. Below are some of the tools that Google suggested:

CrUX Dashboard

This tool provides SEOs with a site overview that shows CWV metrics and offers helpful user demographic reports and historical trends.

The CrUX Dashboard is a great starting place. Once SEOs understand which pages need optimising, the next step involves digging deeper to make a priority list of page optimisations.

Google Search Console

This tool can help online businesses and SEO agencies determine which web pages need fixes based on CWV metrics from the report, which helps identify the number of pages that give a poor user experience. It also provides granular performance metrics, creates reports focusing on mobile or desktop performance, and distinguishes page templates that need improvements.

Page Speed Insights

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a tool that can take in-depth UX metrics measurements on specific pages. Site owners and SEO agencies can compare individual scores to make a priority list of web pages that need CWV optimisations.

After completing the research, SEOs can now move on to the audit’s next stage.

An Overview Of Approach B (Debug And Optimise)

During this phase of the audit, Google tells developers to find the answer to the questions below:

• What fixes need more planning?
• What is the best way to optimise these pages?
• Where are the low-hanging fruits that they can fix first?

Google recommends three tools to assist with the second stage of the CWV audit:

Lighthouse

Lighthouse is the same tool that SEOs use for PageSpeed Insights. However, one can also access it using the web.dev/measure or Chrome DevTools. Though Lighthouse, SEO agencies and online businesses can identify load time optimisations to improve user experience. Moreover, Lighthouse can determine smaller fixes before moving on to more complicated optimisations.

Web Vitals Extension

Unlike Lighthouse, which does not cover First Input Display (FID) and takes measurements up to the point where the page is loaded, the Web Vitals Extension measures metrics during page interaction. Moreover, it covers CLS and FID.

Chrome Dev Tools

This tool can help online businesses and site owners see the impact of layout shifts in real-time, test any code changes, and remove unused code. If they made changes to it, one should rerun approach A to regularly measure the effect of the updates.

Approach C (Monitor And Develop)

After investing time and effort in identifying CWV optimisation opportunities and implementing them, site owners and SEO agencies should continue monitoring their websites’ performance and implementing further updates when needed.

Like most things in the SEO industry, it is not a case of performing a task once, removing it from the task list, and then forgetting about it. According to Google’s research, many SEOs improve their websites’ performance only to worsen within six months.

Therefore, one should also report regression tracking so site owners can take the necessary steps sooner than later to maintain performance and forward plan if they need to schedule additional work.

Google also recommends tools that can assist site owners and SEO agencies in monitoring and development. Below are some of them:

• CrUX API
• CrUX via BigQuery
• Lighthouse-CI
• Web-vitals.js
• PageSpeed Insights API

By following Google’s CWV workflow, website owners and online businesses can identify and optimise web pages with underperforming CWV scores. Moreover, the approaches mentioned above are a great way to forward plan optimisation strategies and ensure that everyone on the team is on the same page.

Perform An In-Depth SEO Audit

SEO audits can take a long time, depending on the website’s size. One can break an in-depth SEO audit into three separate parts:

• Content: keyword research, content maps, metadata, competitor analysis, and so on.
• Links: growth tactics, backlink profile analysis, and more.
• Technical: indexing, hosting, crawl errors, and so on.

For businesses who hire SEO agencies to conduct their site’s SEO audit, they should provide access to a list of passwords and vendors, including:

• Webmaster tools
• Google and Bing ads
• List of vendors
• Social media accounts
• Website backend access
• Google Analytics access and any third-party analytics tools
• Etc.

Get A Free In-Depth SEO Audit With Position1SEO

Position1SEO can provide you with an in-depth professional SEO audit, 100% free! Here, we will identify all of the issues that could be keeping your website from reaching the top of the search engine results page. During the site audit, we will look at the following:

• Backlink reports
• Directory citation report PDF
• Ranking report for target key phrases
• Website review and recommendations
• Google Local review
• On-page review and recommendations
• Google Search Console overview report
• Mobilegeddon report (mobile-friendliness)
• Social media report
• Keyword research
• Etc.

After completing the SEO audit, we will schedule a time and date for a free phone consultation so we can discuss your specific needs. We will talk about the issues highlighted in your SEO audit, and from there, you can choose the SEO tasks you want us to do for you, creating a bespoke SEO package for your business.

For more information about our services, you can get in touch via office@position1seo.co.uk or 0141 846 0114.