Core Web Vitals 2025: Checklist to Achieve Green Scores
Google uses Core Web Vitals to evaluate a websites page speed and on-page user experience. Core Web Vitals comprise of three main metrics for SEO in 2025:
Largest contentful paint is the most complicated graphical element that is shown on the screen. It is usually a video or image. It is not the largest download, but rather the largest visible area of a page that takes the most time and processing power to render.
The largest paint during loading is a meaningful event for your users. They assume the page isn't useful until the most important element is fully loaded. The target you should be aiming for her is less than 2.5 seconds.
The biggest contributors to LCP is images and videos. Ensure any large videos or images on your page provides the user with value, especially on smaller screens.
Use a content delivery network or a caching layer to improve your website speed. Bear in mind that time to first byte accounts for forty percent of your LCP score. This is how long it takes the browser to respond when it requests a file.
Once the page is loaded, the interaction to next paint measures how fast your web page responds to key presses, taps, or clicks. INP replaced First Input Delay in 2024. First Input Delay measured the first interaction on the page, while INP measures all of them. The target you should be aiming for here is less than two hundred milliseconds.
Users expect your website to be response to their taps and clicks. When your page lags, it increases the chances of your visitor abandoning your website.
Ensure your HTML is clean and minimal. The fewer HTML elements you have on your web page, the less work it takes for the page to update. Use as fewer scripts as possible. While the page may be rendered, users may not be able to interact with the page as scripts are still loading or processing.
Animations are great, but limit the number that go into action the second the page loads. Animations can delay user interaction. Compressing JavaScript and CSS files, making them as small as possible, also improves your INP.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is the layout shift of your web page as it loads. You may have noticed when visiting websites that some elements tend to bounce around during loading, then settle into place. This should be avoided as much as possible.
Having elements shifting around as a user tries to interact with your website can be frustrating. The target you are aiming for here is less than 0.1.
Assign a height and width for all images to reduce the need for your page to readjust to fit the image after loading. Use CSS transactions rather than Javascript for changing element positions. Pre-load your fonts with exact sizes and line heights reducing weight and variation.
When you focus on improving your core web vitals, you improve your score, while offering an excellent user experience. Search engines reward websites that have excellent core web vital scores. Do you need help improving your websites core web vitals? Contact Genie Crawl now for a free evaluation and quote.
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