Deciphering the New Google Algorithm

At the risk of repeating content created by other, more experienced, members here that I did not understand at all when originally posted, I am offering my two cents on what I understand the new Google algorithms are trying to achieve.

Gone are the days when two or three keywords would get you ranked. The new regime, if I understand it correctly, aims to incorporate what are called Web Core Vitals into the equation. Web Core Vitals are metrics that are designed to evaluate the user's experience as they land on and navigate on and through your pages. Poor scores on the metrics described below are going to inhibit your ability to rank.

What follows can be found in the Google Search Console. Don't be intimidated. It takes a bit of time to grasp this material but if I can understand it anyone can! The links to this content are included below if you need to review further to help you understand.

The three main metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) which measures loading performance of your page. To provide a good user experience, strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load.

First Input Delay (FID) measures interactivity or the length of time it takes for a user to get from one element of your content to another. To provide a good user experience, strive to have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds. Starting March 2024, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace FID as a Core Web Vital.

Finally, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures visual stability on your page. To provide a good user experience, strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1. Elements on a page can shift if they do not have specified dimensions. The most common causes of a poor CLS are:

• Images without dimensions
• Ads, embeds, and iframes without dimensions
• Dynamically injected content such as ads, embeds, and iframes without dimensions
• Web fonts

Post-load shifts that are unexpected by the user may also be included where there was no qualifying interaction—for example, if you scroll down the page and lazy-loaded content is simultaneously loaded and that causes shifts.

My first foray into the Google Site Kit allowed me to see that my LCP scores were poor due to images on my sites that were not optimized. I now know that there are plugins that will optimize the elements on your pages thereby improving your LCP scores. I chose NitroPack to help me in this regard.

But, as my good friend Jeffrey Brown suggested to me yesterday, specifying the size of an image can help to avoid inclusion of images that are, for example, too large and therefore cause delays in load times. Specifying the size can also eliminate CLS that flows from images or other elements without dimensions.

I'm currently wading through how to remedy CLS and, once I have absorbed that material I will do another short post on what I have covered. My hope is that we can learn this together and begin to navigate the new Google world with better results.