First Input Delay To Be Used As A Ranking Factor

SEO optimisation companies help businesses improve their website performance to boost traffic and generate more sales. But soon, SEO optimisation experts will have one more key factor to take into account. Google recently introduced a user experience metric – First Input Delay (FID) – which is planned to be used as a small ranking factor in the near future.

First Input Delay pushes businesses and webmasters to continuously improve their site performance to increase their ad revenue, leads, and sales. It measures the time that a browser takes to respond to a visitor’s first interaction with the website while it is loading, which is sometimes called Input Latency.

The definition of a single interaction varies, such as tapping a button, clicking a link, or interacting with dropdowns, checkboxes, text input areas, and more – all these will be measured by the FID. However, zooming in and out or scrolling are not considered interactions since there is no response expected from the website itself. The main goal of FID is to measure the site’s responsiveness during its loading time.

First Input Delay is usually caused by scripts and images that are downloaded in a disorderly manner. This means that the main thread of the browser is busy doing something else; therefore, it cannot respond to the user yet. The disordered coding causes a webpage download to pause and start continually, which leads to the site’s unresponsive behaviour towards visitors who interact with the website.

In a sense, FID is similar to a traffic jam that causes slowdowns and accidents. Thus, SEO optimisation companies must make sure to fix any issues as soon as possible.

The problem can usually be solved by focusing on downloading scripts and images in an orderly manner. The solution will usually involve the use of HTML attributes to control the way scripts are downloaded, the optimisation of HTML and photos, and so on. The main goal is to optimise the downloaded attributes, eliminating the pause and start download of webpages.

There are many reasons for a browser’s unresponsiveness. After all, a browser has to complete many tasks just to show a webpage to visitors. Such tasks include downloading style information, scripts, fonts, images, and codes. Then, they will execute the scripts and build the webpage based on the HTML instructions – a process called rendering.

Individual rendering tasks are called “thread of execution”, which is an individual sequence of action. A browser has a Main Thread, which is responsible for creating the webpage that a visitor sees. Sometimes, there are codes that are too slow and large. These cause other tasks to stop for a moment and wait for the large codes to finish downloading and executing before the other tasks continue.

Therefore, businesses and webmasters should aim to have proper SEO optimisation. Their goal is to code the website in a manner that optimises which code is downloaded first, when it is executed, and in an organised way so that the webpage can download and execute tasks as fast as possible.

As for the core web vitals with First Input Delay, there are some third-party codes wherein there’s little that can be done. With that said, your competitors will likely be dealing with the same issues. For instance, any business that relies on Google AdSense will all experience the same problems related to the render-blocking script.

Sometimes, it may be enough for webmasters to just do the best they can to optimise their website. To get the best website performance results, it’s highly recommended to work with an experienced SEO agency.

Here at Position1SEO, we will make sure to optimise each of your webpages, increasing your brand’s visibility in the search engine results pages. Our SEO services will cast a wider net to cover a bigger crowd of potential customers who will be enticed to spend on your products and services – all without you spending anything on advertising costs!

Only a few SEO companies can guarantee you this. We pride ourselves in our no-stone-unturned approach for the best SEO that gives you a spot on the first page of Google.

If interested, give us a ring via 0141 404 7515. You may also write to us at office@position1seo.co.uk.