Skip to content 
In this post I will be showing you a simple way for you to make your local business website to be Core Web Vitals compliant. Although this post is aimed at local business websites, the same simple steps I show in this post and in this video will apply to any WordPress website.
I recommend you watch the video below that explains the simple steps you can apply to your site to enable it to pass Core Web Vitals.
Google announced that it was to roll out its “Page Experience” algorithm update in May 2021. However, earlier in the year, Google postponed the rollout and announced that It Would Take Place in June 2021.
The rollout will commence mid-June. It will be a lengthy rollout and will continue right through to the end of August.
This is a major update, and it is expected to affect a huge number of websites. The sites that will be affected are those that are slow to load and those that have loading issues such as shifting text on the page as the page loads.
It’s important to realize that the rollout of the Google page experience update is going to be just the beginning of the new phase of Google’s focus and attention on page load speed and page performance.
Whatever happens to your websites ranking position for the various phrases during the summer of 2021, it will only be the beginning of Google’s focus on page performance.
What I’m trying to say, is that if your site has not seen much change just yet when the update rolls out, does not mean that your site is not going to be affected in the future. In fact, I am sure that you can count on it that if you don’t address this right now, you can bank on it that your site will start to tank in the rankings at some stage in the near future.
How Can Google Identify Page Load Speed?
Google can’t identify load speed via an algorithm. Google identifies load speed by people opening webpages via their Google Chrome browser. It is the browser that collects the data to identify the load speed. This means, that rank shift will take place as time progresses.
The other thing I am trying to say is that whether your site increases or decreases in rank when the algorithm update rolls out in the summer of 2021, you should make it a priority to get your site to be Core Web Vitals compliant as soon as possible so that you can be ahead of your competition.
What To Expect If Your Website Is Not Core Web Vitals Compliant
Basically, if your website fails Core Web Vitals, then you can expect your website to drop in rank over the months ahead. If your website performance really badly, then you can expect other websites that are outperforming yours to gain higher rank above you and force you lower and lower in Google’s ranking.
Obviously, if you drop in rank on Google, the number of leads you get from people searching for your business on Google will drastically drop off.
The page experience update can be summed up as a core web vitals update or getting your site to pass Core Web Vitals update.
What Is Core Web Vitals All About?
Core Web Vitals is all about how fast your website loads on different devices, but primarily, how it loads on mobile devices.
In 2019, Google launched its Mobile First algorithm update. This was the 1st step into what is now going to be the Google Page Experience update. The reason why Google brought in Mobile First was to ensure that websites complied and gave the presidents to the way their websites loaded on mobile devices.
The Google “Page Experience” algorithm update is basically about how fast your website loads on mobile devices and how it loads on those devices.
So, how do you make your WordPress website Core Web Vitals compliant?
There are 2 ways of going about this: –
Method #1
Lift up the hood and tinker at the code inside the WordPress engine. Let me tell you now, this can be a minefield even for people who are supposedly “expert”.
Method #2
follow the steps that I’m about to layout in the remainder of this article.
The steps that I’m going to outline below will show you the exact steps of how to make your WordPress website Core Web Vitals compliant without you having to spend thousands of dollars or hours of your time. In a nutshell, I’m going to show you how to become compliant in a very simple way.
How To Find Out If Your Website Is Core Web Vitals Compliant
it is simple to find out if your website is Core Web Vitals compliant or not. If it is compliant, then your website will pass the Google “Page Experience” algorithm update.
To discover if your website, or the pages on your site are Core Web Vitals compliant, there are two ways you can find out. The first is to go into your Google Search Console and check in your account by clicking on the Core Web Vitals link in the side bar. The other is to use a tool called Page Speed Insights.
Google Search Console
To determine your site compliance in Google Search Console, log in to your account and click on the “Core Web Vitals” link in the side bar as shown in the screenshot below.
When the page open, Google will display a chart that shows a timeline together with a graph that identifies any pages that may need attention with regards to load speed or page performance.
If there are no lines on the chart, it will mean that your site is Core Web Vitals compliant.
You can also click on the “Open Report” link in the top right corner, and it will display the details of the pages and posts that fail.
Page Speed Insights Tool
You will need to open the Google page speed insights tool. To open it, click the link below: –
You should then enter your website homepage URL in the page speed insights box.
When you’ve added your URL and the tool has updated, you will see that there is an option for mobile and desktop. Your desktop score will virtually always be better than your mobile score.
You will need to focus on your mobile score, because that is what Google will be focusing on.
You should be aiming for a score in the 90’s for mobile and above 95 for desktop. It is not the score however, that is important. The score is a good indication of site performance. However, the important scores are: –
- First Contentful Paint
- Largest Contentful Paint
- Cumulative Layout Shift
If your site is new or Google has not been able to assess the traffic metrics yet, the page speed insight tool will provide you a different layout.
If the page speed insight tool returns the detail as shown in this screenshot below, it means that Google has not yet been able to collect sufficient data to determine specifics about your site.
The screenshot below shows my brand-new blog that is too new for Google to assess at the time of taking this screenshot.
In these 3 sections you can determine if your site has passed Core Web Vitals or not. If your site has sufficient data for Google to determine this, then there will be a notification on the page that says that the page has passed Core Web Vitals.
However, if there is insufficient data, so long as the 3 points that I indicated in the screenshot above have a green number, then your site will be Core Web Vitals compliant.
What To Do If Your Site Fails Core Web Vitals
If the page URL that you entered into page speed insights has failed the Core Web Vitals assessment, you will be able to find out what it has failed for, by checking the details below the scores as shown in the screenshot below: –
Each page will have different details and suggestions on improving the load speed. The screenshot above shows red and orange suggestions. The red suggestions require critical attention. For example, the page can improve its load speed by up to 4.86 Seconds by Reducing unused JavaScript.
How To Fix The Issues Shown By Page Speed Insights
I strongly advise that you take a look at the video at the top of the page. That video takes you step-by-step through the process of eliminating these issues.
The process that I show in the video simplifies everything. In a nutshell, all you need to do is add to plug-ins to your WordPress website and configure the settings in those plug-ins as I show in the video.
The 1st plug-in is called Short Pixel: –
Short Pixel
short pixel is an image optimizing plug-in. It carries out a number of functions to your images on your site.
The two main functions are
– Compressing the images
– Converting the images to next Gen format
This plug-in is a free plug-in. However, you will need to purchase an image optimization pack. Prices are very low and you can get the starting package that allows up to 10,000 images to be optimized on your site for just a one-off payment of $10
You can get hold of the plug-in by clicking on the link below. However, I need to stress, that you should watch the video above and follow the settings that I advise together with my advice on image quantity.
Find Out More About Short Pixel WordPress Plugin
WP Rocket
WP Rocket is a powerful caching plug-in. There are many caching plug-ins on the market but none of them perform as well as this one in my opinion and none of them are as comprehensive in tackling the issues of getting your website Core Web Vitals compliant.
This plug-in is a premium plug-in but worth every penny. If your website is 1 that brings you in money, then the improvement in long-term rank on Google will have paid for the plug-in multiple times over.
You can get hold of the plug-in by clicking on the link below. However, I need to stress, that you should watch the video above and follow the settings that I advise and show in the video.
Find Out More About WP Rocket WordPress Plugin
Also, in the video, I mentioned about the script that you can add to WP Rocket. You can download the script by clicking the link below
Important!!
I would strongly advise against trying to get your site to pass Core Web Vitals on the cheap, where you end up looking for a free way of doing it because free plug-ins just won’t do the job. I know this because I have researched this heavily, so trust me in this.
As I said a moment ago, if your website brings you in money or if you are dependent on it to generate leads, then getting your site to be Core Web Vitals compliance is essential.
Other Issues That Can Affect Core Web Vitals compliance
There are other issues that can affect your Core Web Vitals compliance. These can include hosting, plugins and your theme.
If your website is hosted on a shared server, the likelihood is, that your website will not pass Core Web Vitals and will not therefore fair well in the Google page experience update.
Hosting
If your website is hosted on a shared server or shared hosting as it is known, then you should look at getting a different host.
You should look at getting a VPS (virtual private server) server from a hosting company that has an amazing track record for high-tech servers and customer support.
My recommendation for you is that you use a company called DreamHost. DreamHost is an award-winning low-cost hosting company that offer high-speed, high technology servers.
Moving your WordPress website to DreamHost is simple to do. The company provide a free plug-in to enable this. You can get your website switched over in just a few minutes. If you are not techie yourself, you can get your web developer to do this for you.
Here is a link for you to find out more about the DreamHost VPS hosting:
WordPress Plugins
Another aspect that can drag your WordPress website down and stop it passing Core Web Vitals are your websites plug-ins.
A plug-in is basically code. Code is extra baggage on your website. The more plug-ins you have, the more baggage you are adding to your website and therefore, the slower it will load.
My advice to you, is that you carefully analyze the plug-ins that you have installed on your site and ask yourself if you really need those plug-ins. If they are not essential to the operation of your website then you should remove them.
WordPress Theme
Another thing that can drag your WordPress website down and stop it passing Core Web Vitals is your WordPress theme itself. A lot of themes are poorly coded and heavy in code structure / weight.
The worst offenders are page builder themes. People use page builder themes typically because it is a lazy way to create a decent looking layout. However, the performance of page builder themes is typically awful, and you should absolutely move away from those.
Other themes that may cause your site to fail Core Web Vitals may be complex themes or just badly coded free themes. Just because the theme is available, doesn’t mean it is a good one, especially if it is free.
If you have done all you can so far to get your website Core Web Vitals compliant, then the last step will be to change your theme or even have your website re-created.
WPOptimal – The Ultimate Solution To WordPress Speed And Optimization
My recommendation for anyone that has their site built on WordPress or if they are going to build a website on WordPress is to use WPOptimal.
WPOptimal is a plugin that has the functionality of a slick highly optimized theme that enables the user to have ultimate design control over site appearance whilst enabling highly optimized code to maintain and achieve a lightweight, fast site.
The WP Optimal plugin will require a bit of work if you already have a WordPress site that is built because you will need to do some design build work. I will write a post on WPOptimal and its functionality etc soon. It is very new, and I am working closely with the developers in this.
WPOptimal is the only plugin or theme that I am aware of that has been coded to be mobile First compliant and also, to have be written around the specification of Core Web Vitals performance on ALL devices.
The coding of the theme is ultra-lightweight and has all of the image optimization coded as part of the plugin processing.
Websites built on this theme are lightning fast. The screenshot below shows the performance of a site built on WP optimal: –
If you have an existing website, you can ask your web developer to add the theme to your site and to configure it so that it looks exactly the way you wanted to whilst performing to the ultimate standard.
For now (as of writing this post),WPOptimalis not available on general release to the public. However, if you would like details on this plugin, please send a message to us using Contact Us form.
The plugin starts at $197 per annum for a single license.
Conclusion
the detail provided on this post is giving you all that you need to apply to your WordPress website so that you can achieve the highest score and performance regarding Core Web Vitals.
I wish you all the best in getting your website to the highest performing standard. Using the tips, tools and techniques I have detailed in the video and content above will equip you to achieve such results.