How Shopify’s Core Web Vitals App Can Elevate Your SEO

With thousands of new e-commerce sites switching on every day – some of them potentially competitors in your space – it has never been more important to maintain your SEO rankings by any optimization possible. Although setting up a Shopify store can give you a whole world of tools to help maximize SEO, your business must regularly stay up-to-date with the latest changes to how search engines rank websites. Enter Google’s Core Web Vitals - a brand-new set of rules that can cause a dramatic shift to how your Shopify website ranks on the keywords you care about.

While other sites might see this as another point of pain, this is the perfect opportunity for your Shopify store to get ahead of the pack. Through the help of the Shopify Web Vitals App, and with a clear understanding of what these Core Web Vitals mean, you’ll soon have an e-commerce store that will not only maintain but even elevate your search rankings.

Want to know what Core Web Vitals are and how they can potentially have major impacts on your websites page rank? Let’s dive in.

What are Google’s Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of performance metrics that measure the quality of a user’s experience on a web page. Generally speaking, scoring high in these metrics means your web page loads quickly, is immediately responsive, and has visual stability. While it can be easy to assume that you only need to make your Shopify store run as fast as possible, Google has ensured that Core Web Vitals instead encourage websites to improve the speed metrics that matter to users the most. These performance metrics consist of three key metrics: cumulative layout shift, largest contentful paint, and first input delay.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

Cumulative Layout Shift measures the visual stability experienced by a user on a web page. Essentially, CLS gauges how often elements on your web page move around as your Shopify site loads.

It’s a metric that you’ve probably experienced yourself. Has an obtrusive ad suddenly popped-in while you were reading some important text causing you to lose your place? Have you accidentally pressed a link because of a new image deciding to load? How about accidentally pressing ‘buy’ when you actually wanted to press ‘go back’? With so many examples, it’s easy to see how CLS can affect a user’s experience.

You can reduce CLS on your Shopify store by:

• Clearly defined dimensions on your page elements (e.g. advertisements, images, videos)
• Reducing dynamically added content into your existing content

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

This measurement focuses on how long it takes a web page to load its largest piece of content immediately visible to the user. For example, this might be your hero image, heading text, or a video at the top of your page. LCP is used by Google as a key indicator of how fast your Shopify site loads.

It’s important to note, this metric measures how long a user waits until they can actually see the content, not if the element can be interacted with. You can improve LCP by:

• Improve your server response speed by upgrading your web host
• Implement lazy loading
• Reducing and optimizing your large website elements

First Input Delay (FID)

First Input Delay measures how long it takes between a user interacting with the web page and the site responding. This can be pressing a button, scrolling down the page, or a simple keyboard input. In simpler terms, it’s how fast your website responds to the first action on the page. Google uses this metric to account for how real-life users interact with your website.

With the average attention span of a user rapidly decreasing as they quickly search for the information they need; any input delay can cause a visitor to leave your web page - even if it’s only for a moment. In turn, it’s recommended by Google that a website’s FID should be at or less than 100 milliseconds.

You can improve FID by:

• Reducing or optimizing your websites third-party code
• Improving your JavaScripts execution time code

Why Google's Web Vitals matter for Shopify merchants

Google has put an incredible focus on serving up search results that not only provide the most relevant content, but also provide the best user experience. By providing relevant and easy-to-use websites, the search engine can provide an optimal service that keeps people coming back. Core Web Vitals not only aim to encourage Shopify stores to improve their page speed, but to elevate their user experience in meaningful ways for visitors.

Why you need to pay attention to Core Web Vitals for SEO

Still not convinced in implementing optimizations to improve your Core Web Vitals? Here’s something that might pique your interest. Starting in 2021, Google is planning to make Core Web Vitals an official ranking factor.

In other terms, your website might be penalized for having poor Core Web Vitals.

Core Web Vitals are here to stay, and now has never been a better time to start enhancing your page experience to ensure these metrics are as positive as possible. While this is just one of many ways to optimize your online store, refining your user experience can help maintain and boost your search ranking on every important keyword.

How does Google’s Core Web Vitals impact your conversion rate?

Core Web Vitals are all about improving the user’s experience by encouraging websites to reduce their load times, visual stability, and overall responsiveness.

No matter what type of product or service you provide on your e-commerce site, it’s clear to see why having healthy Core Web Vitals can increase conversion rates. With a fast, reliable, and stable experience, users are more likely to purchase from your store and come back in the future. What’s more, studies have shown over the years that having faster page speeds and an improved user experience can significantly boost a Shopify store’s conversion rate.

So, with the obvious impacts and importance of Core Web Vitals, what can a Shopify website owner do to ensure their store is optimized for each of the three metrics? First, let’s take a look at Shopify’s Web Vitals App.

What is the Shopify Web Vitals App?

Offering thousands of options to choose from, it can often be daunting to choose the best Shopify apps that can drive sales for your store. The Shopify Web Vital App stands out as an essential tool for anyone looking to optimize the user experience for every customer. So, what exactly does the application do?

Also known as the Core Web Vitals Dashboard, this app provides Shopify site owners with the ability to view their own Web Vital scores and also see how it compares to their competitors.

Think your website loads quickly? The app can help confirm that for you and if it stacks up to people in the same space as you.

How Shopify Web Vitals App Works

The Core Web Vitals Dashboard analyzes your entire website and provides an easy-to-understand report outlining:

• Your scores in the three key Web Vitals (CLS, LCP, FID)
• How your website compares to competitors in all key metrics

With this wealth of information located in one convenient location, you’ll never need to look at other sites of software applications to understand how your website is going. Moreover, this powerful tool can help you understand areas of opportunity for your Shopify store to improve. Whether it’s by optimizing your primary piece of content, improving your page stability, or an upgrade to your web host, the Shopify Web Vitals App helps site owners understand the next big step to take to elevate their user experience and SEO rankings.

So, what’s next?

It’s time to install the Core Web Vitals app! Head to the store page now and set up this fantastic app for your website now. With the app successfully installed, there might be a treasure trove of information to help you elevate your website in search rankings. Despite this, it can be noticeably difficult to enact the changes you need to bring you across the line on the Core Web Vitals.

You could take the time to find out everything there is to know on Shopify SEO, but it might be better to get in contact with professionals who can handle all the harder parts for you instead. That’s where the Online Marketing Gurus come in.

Want to get your hands on a complimentary SEO audit by the Online Marketing Gurus? We’ll audit your website, tell you how you’re performing in comparison with your competitors, and come up with a 12-month SEO success plan for you. Click here to secure your free digital marketing audit!