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Episode 126: Core Web Vitals: What You Need to Know
275 Plays3 years ago
Google is rolling out with a major page experience update this coming June. It’s an update that was originally scheduled to be released in March so the delay is good news for those who are just learning about it. In this episode Krista and I discuss what this algorithm update is all about, what you need to know about core web vitals, including optimizations that you can make your Showit or WordPress websites, and we discuss how worried or not worried you should be about what's coming.
For show notes visit...https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-core-web-vitals/
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Transcript
Optimization vs. Speed
00:00:05
Speaker
I wanna emphasize that the fastest website in the world is not necessarily the most optimized website, all right? Or I guess what I'm trying to say is a fast website is not necessarily an optimized website, all right? So when we're talking about optimization, we're talking about having a website that's going to get the conversion that you're seeking, okay? Whether that's somebody filling out the contact form or somebody purchasing something from your shop, all right? And to that end, we should pay attention to and take seriously something like website speed
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:49
Speaker
Maybe you've heard, maybe you haven't, but Google is rolling out with a major page experience update this coming June. It's an update that was originally scheduled to be released in March, so the delay is good news for those of you who are just learning about it. In this episode, Chris and I discuss what this algorithm update is all about, what you need to know about Core Web Vitals, including optimizations that you can make to your Show It or WordPress websites. And we discuss how worried, or not worried, that you should be about what's coming.
00:01:18
Speaker
This episode does have a corresponding blog post that has a bit more information about the update. We'll also try to keep that blog post updated as more information rolls out. While Google has provided a lot of insight into the update, there are still plenty of unknowns. Anyways, be sure to check out the show notes at DaveyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode and we want to hear from you. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Brands That Book podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DaveyandChrista.
Google's Page Experience Update
00:01:48
Speaker
Now, on to the episode. All right, welcome. Talking about Google today on this cold May day. It's going to be 60 today. What world is that cold? It is anything under 70. One of these days, you're going to start a podcast not talking about the weather, not complaining about the weather. As soon as it's consistently above 70 degrees, that day will come. You were insane.
00:02:17
Speaker
But today's actually a pretty nice day. It's sunny out. I've spent so much time working out on the porch that I came back to my desk here to record this podcast and my mouse has died. So charging that. Kind of annoying though that you have to charge, like I kind of just like the battery. You used to have the battery one and I told you it's annoying to charge your mouse and yet you wanted the new one anyways. Alright, alright.
00:02:43
Speaker
Well, anyways, we're here. We're talking about Google. This episode probably go live the same day that we that I share a episode that we recorded over at the Till Agency about some of Apple's updates. So a technology update. Yeah, this is a very techy day. Yeah, very techy day.
00:03:00
Speaker
But we'll try to keep it as simple as possible. I will say that for this episode in particular, there is a blog post that corresponds with it as well. And so I think there's some areas where maybe the blog post goes into maybe a little bit more detail. I try to keep both. We're trying to keep both high level. So, you know, check out that, especially if you're just listening and you're like, I can't follow along with, I don't know what they're saying.
00:03:22
Speaker
And I think in a lot of ways, too, there's a lot of unknown as well. I mean, just as there was with the Apple update, if you've been following along with what's been going on with Apple and privacy concerns and so on and so forth. And the gist there is that, you know, with the rollout of iOS 14.5, basically, companies like Facebook now have to ask you explicitly if you are cool with them tracking you across the web.
00:03:46
Speaker
Right. And of course, that has a major impact on their advertising platform. And then of course, the the probably millions of businesses that advertise with them. And Google, likewise, Google is rolling out with a page experience update. So they it's sort of a, I guess, being touted as a major update to their algorithm. So that's what we're focusing on today.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, if it sounds super technical, it can be, but I think Baby breaks it down in a helpful way. Yes, thank you. So try to break down a helpful way, try to get feedback from a number of different people just to make sure that it was being explained in a way that makes sense. But here's the gist of it. So here are kind of my thoughts. And so if you listen to just anything, if you only want to listen to part of this podcast, I think hear these things.
Impact of Google's Update
00:04:34
Speaker
I want to say at the outset that I could be wrong.
00:04:38
Speaker
Wow. Have you ever said that before? I probably won't be. No, I'm just kidding. But I could be wrong and this could be, you know, maybe a much bigger shake up than I would expect it to be. But I feel like I've seen enough of these types of big, you know, quote unquote, big updates come and go to know that, you know, I mean, they're important to pay attention to. But at the end of the day, you know, I don't think this is some sort of like search website apocalyptic event.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like we've seen a lot of these announcements over the years. People tend to get really worried with the GDPR update. Oh yeah, the GDPR update. And there is so much freaking out over that and it just hasn't been a big deal at all. We don't have one on our website because we serve them mostly.
00:05:23
Speaker
It just hasn't been as big of an update as people expected it to be. Anyways, we'll dive into the Google update here. I want to go over these few things real quick. Number one, Google updates its algorithm estimated thousands of times each year. And so most of those updates come and go without really the general public being aware of that. I would say even most people with a website, those thousands of updates come and go and people aren't even aware they happened.
00:05:50
Speaker
That's important to keep in mind just as part of, you know, just as we think about this update as well. I will also say that what this update is about, it's about measuring page experience or the user experience that you're providing people when they visit your website. Google has cared about user experience long before this update.
00:06:10
Speaker
So basically how they are the signals that they've come up with now to measure user experience. Yes, that's sort of new. But there's a lot of there's a lot of things that aren't very new about this update. I feel like it's, it's packaged in a new way, you know, and I think that's part of Google's initiative is they want to make
00:06:30
Speaker
understanding user experience and especially they want to make it more explicit how they understand user experience for website administrators. They want to package it in a way that maybe makes more sense and is more manageable, just easier to understand, but they have cared about user experience long before this. So it's not as if this update is all of a sudden measuring or treating user experience as a ranking signal and prior to this it wasn't.
00:06:55
Speaker
Right. So something to keep in mind there, I would say along those those same lines, if you are verified with Google Search Console, you have likely seen a new report in Google Search Console called page experience. And this is where you'll monitor errors related to this update, you may have seen some of those, you know, errors pop up and wonder what they are. So that's what you're that's what you're seeing there.
00:07:20
Speaker
I'm guessing that the overall impact, like day one of this update being released, it's going to start being released sometime in June and they're going to finish releasing it, they say sometime in August, so throughout the summer. I expect it to be minimal. Impact to be minimal. That's good. Yeah.
00:07:39
Speaker
So – and who knows? I admit that maybe there's more of a shakeup than I expect, but I think I have a few good reasons to expect that it's going to be minimal. And I think just the fact that they're rolling it out so incrementally probably means that they're looking – they're not looking to make a big impact day one either. So – and then also
SEO Success Factors
00:07:58
Speaker
I guess something else I mentioned there. Well, I'll get into that in a second. So the last thing that I'm going to mention.
00:08:03
Speaker
is if we want to do well in search, if we want to do well when it comes to SEO, we should be one, seeking to create awesome, stellar, compelling content. We should be building backlinks to our website. So that PR, the PR aspect of search engine optimization, basically a backlink is just a link from another website back to your website. Typically, the more you have, the better.
00:08:27
Speaker
You know, that's a little bit of an oversimplified way to put it, but it's like, you know, I always compare it to a friend recommending a local restaurant. If you have 10 friends that are recommending you go to the same restaurant, you're gonna think, oh, you know, that restaurant must be pretty good. And the last thing is providing users with a stellar user experience. And my guess is, you know, that last piece, that's kind of what we're talking about today. My guess, again, is that you all have as website admins, all right?
00:08:54
Speaker
have cared about that long before today as Google has. That's true pre-update. It's going to be true post-update. I think to a certain extent, I don't think there's a lot of reason to fret. Hopefully this impact doesn't impact many of you in a significant way.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's one of those things where you should definitely – I mean, it's definitely worth paying attention to, and that's why we're recording this podcast. That's why we're releasing this content. But at the same time, I don't think it's reason to lose sleep. I'm certainly not losing sleep over this. And if you think I'm not approaching this seriously enough, as I state in the article,
00:09:34
Speaker
So I cite a recent study done by search metrics that found that only 4% of websites, I think it was closer to 10%. This is 4% of websites according to desktop data. I think it's 10% according to mobile data scored achieved a good core web vital score.
00:09:53
Speaker
for this new update. For this new update. Right. Core Web Vitals are the new metrics that Google are... They've already rolled out with, but basically will be tied to that ranking signal of page experience. Google made it have a huge impact on website. 96% of websites would just not do well right away, which they're not going to do.
00:10:15
Speaker
But that's the thing is that's one of the important things to remember about all of these updates is you're not, yes, you're being scored against the benchmark. Like when you go run a given test on your website, you're being scored against benchmarks. But when it comes to searches, those results are relative to competitors for those searches.
00:10:35
Speaker
So that's why in certain areas and for certain search terms, it's a lot easier to rank than for others. So for those more difficult searches where there's more content out there, then having an advantage in even the slightest way becomes more important. But if you're the only photographer in a rural town, chances are you could get a pretty bad Core Web Vital score and still be fine.
00:11:02
Speaker
Right, or part of that Core Web Vitals score could say that your website is on the slow side, but it could be comparing you to benchmarks that don't take into account the fact that images are very important on your website. So if you're a photographer and you value having high-quality images on your website, your website is probably going to rank slower in the Core Web Vitals score.
00:11:22
Speaker
Yeah, and again, just goes back to that relative, you're being ranked against competitors for the same search, and so all photographers, for instance, anybody who's in an industry that's very media heavy, they're all going to struggle with the same things, which is how do I optimize my images enough that they still look good, but at the same time, my website's still loading pretty quickly. Quickly enough that people are gonna stick around.
00:11:49
Speaker
So we talk about that a lot, especially when we talk about search engine optimization. I think it's worth mentioning here when it comes to website speed. When you run a website speed test, you are basically getting a score for website speed. And a fast website doesn't necessarily mean
Understanding Core Web Vitals
00:12:09
Speaker
that you have an optimized website. I mean, if you put no images on your text and don't have any colors or fonts that are fun or anything, you're going to rank really fast.
00:12:19
Speaker
But is that going to be the best experience for your visitors? Exactly. And just to clarify what you're saying there, you said you're going to rank really fast. Oh, sorry. You're going to load very quickly. Yeah, your website's going to load very quickly, but you're not providing a good user experience. No. Right? So we could all go that route where we just have plain text on our websites. Yeah, I don't think we would sell any websites.
00:12:41
Speaker
Exactly. That's something that's worth mentioning. I think it's worth people kind of going about and think about some of your favorite big companies and go run their websites through some of these speed tests and see what kind of scores they get. My guess is that you'll see some pretty bad scores in there. You should also keep in mind they might even be paying for their own servers that help them go even faster than if they weren't on a special server. There's just so many things to keep in mind.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. But all that to say, all right, you know, again, that's not to say, Oh, this isn't a big update, and you shouldn't pay attention to it. I think if anything, there is opportunity here. All right, it's a good opportunity to maybe get ahead of your competitors and some of this just a good opportunity maybe to dig into website speed. Maybe you haven't really thought about that before. And there's just some easy things to do, or easy things that you can do to improve your website speed and your core web vital course. And so that's what we're going to get into for the rest of this, this episode here.
00:13:38
Speaker
So basically Core Web Vitals are a set of signals that Google is using to measure the user experience of a given web page. And I would say this initiative came about because Google realized that there are so many different metrics out there that web admins had to follow when it came to user experience that it can be difficult to figure out, okay, what exactly should I be focusing on?
00:13:59
Speaker
And so in Google's own words, they said site owners should not have to be performance gurus in order to understand the quality of experience they are delivering to their users. The Web Vitals Initiative aims to simplify the landscape and help sites focus on the metrics that matter most the core Web Vitals.
00:14:17
Speaker
So, whether they actually simplify things, who knows? I think a lot of people probably look at Core Web Vitals and they're like, this is the simple version? Yeah, it is a lot of new terms to learn and new things to try to figure out how to optimize on your site. Yeah, and so while there might be a little bit more, a little new vocabulary or these reports might be new to you, again, it's not like what they're measuring is completely new.
00:14:41
Speaker
So there's three Core Web Vitals currently. Google has mentioned that they might add more Core Web Vitals down the line, but the three that we're paying attention to now are Largest Contentful Paint, which measures loading performance. So how quickly your page loads?
00:14:56
Speaker
Essentially, yep. And there's some nuance there for sure that we can get into in a minute. First, input delay, which measures how long it takes for your webpage to become interactive. And then cumulative layout shift, which measures the visual stability of a page.
00:15:11
Speaker
which sounds very technical. Sure. And basically, cumulative layout shift is the one I've heard most about, especially from show users. And we'll talk about why here in a minute. But let's just dig into the largest contentful paint, basically, in terms of when you go to a website, you don't necessarily need the entire page to load instantly for you to start using that website.
00:15:32
Speaker
But you would certainly want the most important content, typically that content above the fold, to load quickly. So the header, the hero spot, the first two things that you would see when you visit a website. Sure. And the large Contentful Paint measures the loading performance by examining how quickly the largest asset, image or text, loads in the viewport, or essentially the area of the website you can see, whatever device that you're on.
00:16:01
Speaker
So a good largest contentful paint score is 2.5 seconds or less. And again, so it's a little bit different than saying, okay, how quickly does your site load from start to finish? And there's a few things that people can do to improve their largest contentful paint score.
00:16:20
Speaker
Google says that there's four factors that primarily affect this. Server response times, render blocking JavaScript and CSS, resource load times, and client-side rendering. And so for most people, that might as well be in a different language. Yeah, I know. I think you need to explain a little more about each one. Sure. Yeah. So slow server response time. Well, let's just focus on what most people can control. Yeah, can control. Which, what do you think that is? The resource load times?
00:16:48
Speaker
the server response times. I feel like I just failed a quiz. You did. You did. I'm just taking notes. I'll give you your grade at the end of this. So, a few things about server response times. This has to do with probably the hosting plan that you chose for your website. Basically, pick a good host.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah, just there. Yes, I mean, to a certain extent, it's pick a good host. Yes, there's some front end things that you can do. But I think, you know, first and foremost, picking a reputable host, if show it host your website, that's great, you know, and so if you're on show it Squarespace Wix, one of those options, there's not much you can do on this front, because they also host your website, I would say though, that the benefit of choosing a website like show it, is that they're going to take care of a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
00:17:40
Speaker
They
Improving Website Performance
00:17:41
Speaker
care a lot about these statistics and how fast your website is living. Exactly. I would say this whole thing, it's a series of trade-offs. You probably pick show it because you're getting a website that you can maintain easily that you can also make beautiful and have the creative control over the websites you want.
00:18:02
Speaker
But what you're giving up is, you know, some of the technical responsibility. And so a lot of us are happily giving up the technical responsibility, right? And I think what happens though is, you know, we start seeing maybe some of these Search Console errors and we start worrying, you know, we show it doing, you know, what's best for our website. And I would say of all the companies that I trust,
00:18:22
Speaker
Oh, yeah, we just show it more than most. Yeah, more than most. Exactly. And so that's something to keep in mind, too, is like, they're looking at these things, too. It does them no good if their websites aren't performing well. So they take this kind of stuff seriously. But for those of you who are not on a show it, you know, maybe you're on WordPress and you can choose whatever host you want to, you know, this is a good opportunity to choose a host that's that's reputable. I would say choosing a non EIG host is probably a good first step.
00:18:47
Speaker
Can you explain what EMT is? Yeah, basically there's companies out there that buy up other companies and I'll just say generally, all right?
00:18:57
Speaker
We've hosted with these before and moved off. The customer support's bad. Once they get bought, you can't control as much. We found our site was much slower. Another thing we'll say about hosting is that the cheaper plans are cheaper for a reason. It's because you're on a shared server with a bunch of other people's sites. If their sites are slower, they're going to negatively impact your site and that's nothing you have control over. It's better to go with a host that is going to give you your own server.
00:19:26
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. So there's just servers, there's hosts out there that that, you know, one one host that we like is flywheel, you know, but again, even when it comes to hosting, there are some really lightweight, lean options, you know, if you want to go on something like digital ocean, and set up your and configure your own own stuff, like you're going to get something that that, that moves pretty quickly, right? What's the trade off, though?
00:19:49
Speaker
You need to be very technical to set it up. I don't even know if I could set that up. You're just going to have to be much more technical in setting it up. You're going to be the one that's going to be troubleshooting stuff when things go down. So you have to ask yourself, OK, what's that middle ground? Something like a flywheel, I think, makes a lot of sense to us because you have what seems like a solid team behind it. And at the same time, they're providing a product that places a priority on optimization or performance or other.
00:20:19
Speaker
Something to keep in mind there. I think another easy thing to do is to optimize images and videos on your website. This is one of those things that we typically say to people. If we see people's sites are massive, like 30 gigs, it's typically because they're either uploading full resolution images or they're uploading images that are still just far too big or their blog posts have like 200 images in them and they're really large images and that's really going to slow down your website.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So image optimization is one of those things that might be a little bit tedious to do, but is worth it and can often provide people who are experiencing, you know, just really slow website load speeds, a nice little
Cumulative Layout Shift Explained
00:20:57
Speaker
boost. And we'll include a couple links in the show notes to some videos that I have. Basically, when we optimize our images, we size them. So you can either size them right in Photoshop or Lightroom or run them through blog stomp.
00:21:08
Speaker
And then we've been running them lately through Tiny JPEG because that just seems to crunch them even more without losing quality.
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, and so we'll link to those. But it's something, you know, I think people almost don't want to hear it. You know, they're like, okay, but what else? You know, what's the little, what's the toggle I can switch that's going to make my my website? Most of the time it's images. Yeah, I would say a lot of times what we see is just it is around images, for sure, at least things that you can do, you know, again, it's all about trade off. So there's design, there's things that you could do to the design of your website to make it load more quickly, you can get rid of different functionality.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah, but remember, just because you got rid of that functionality, and now you have a better Core Web Vital score, a better page load speed, does that mean your website's better? Right. And sometimes, yeah, maybe, but sometimes not. So something to keep in mind there, but we'll link to a couple resources.
00:22:03
Speaker
Now, moving on. Okay. First input delay. Okay. All right. Now this measures how long it takes for your site to become interactive. So I don't know if you've ever gone to a website, maybe you know exactly where you want to go. So as the page is loading, you're like clicking on a link. And it doesn't actually click. Yeah, it's not working yet. Right? So basically, first input delay is measuring, okay, how long does it take for that website to essentially become interactive, right?
00:22:27
Speaker
So first input delay is interesting because you can't actually measure first input delay or in the lab as they say. So when you run a speed test, what it will give you is a score or a time around total blocking time.
00:22:44
Speaker
Alright, so if you go to GTmetrics, for instance, which is one of our favorite tools to use, we have a paid account with GTmetrics just because we use it often. And the reason we have a paid account with them, by the way, is because if you use GTmetrics, it's only going to give you a desktop score if you're on the free account.
00:23:00
Speaker
If you're on the paid account, it will also give you, or you can run a mobile test as well. And it's worth knowing both. But point being is you'll see total blocking time. And that's what's gonna correspond to first input delay. Okay, does that make sense?
00:23:14
Speaker
So is this something that most people can control on their websites? Yes and no. It's one of those things where, as we were just saying, if you are on Show It, Squarespace, Wix, there's a little less you're going to have control over. Again, when I say that,
00:23:34
Speaker
can't emphasize enough, I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. I think for most of us, we're like, oh, good, we'll happily hand over this technical thing. With that said, it is nice to be able to make some updates there. But point being, just so I'm clear, when you run the test on GT metrics, what you're going to be paying attention to is total blocking time. And what Google has said is, basically, if you make improvements to total blocking time,
00:24:01
Speaker
that should also improve your FID or first input delay score. Like I said, if you're using a website builder like ShowIt, you can rest assured that the ShowIt team is doing what they need to do to make sure that all is well on that front. WordPress users, you do have maybe a few different tools that you can utilize to improve total blocking time.
00:24:24
Speaker
And if you're on the show at Advanced Plan, you can add these. In theory. In theory. Okay, so WP Rocket is actually, so that's going to be one of the tools that you're going to hear a lot about throughout this episode and in the blog post that I wrote. WP Rocket is our favorite caching tool, okay? And so basically, it's a plugin that can help with speed optimization. And is it free?
00:24:45
Speaker
WP Rocket is not free, but it's not particularly expensive either. I want to say, well, check, I don't want to say and be wrong, but I don't remember it being anything more than $50 a year.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, I can't remember, but we also have a license that allows us to put it on a lot of websites. But anyways, WP Rocket has some features that are going to help with total blocking time, like reducing the impact of JavaScript code, which is going to be one of the main things that's going to impact first input delay and total blocking time. So WP Rocket is worth checking out. I've also linked to a help article on WP Rocket that talks about the features that are tied specifically to total blocking time.
00:25:23
Speaker
So that's worth checking out. Another tool that's worth checking out is WP Asset Cleanup. And basically, we reduce page bloat. And what I mean is, in the background of your website, especially WordPress websites where, you know, maybe you have a ton of plugins, and we're definitely those people, you know, we have probably more plugins that are recommended, but they add what we what we feel like is functionality that's worth it to our website. Well, we have a pretty complex website.
00:25:47
Speaker
I'll just throw that out there too. Yeah, for sure. But point being is that WP Asset Cleanup can help you figure out, okay, what do you need for this page to load and only this page to load and operate? And there's sometimes a lot of other things that are going on kind of in the background of a page that isn't necessary to that page functioning.
00:26:08
Speaker
So WP asset can can help with that or WP asset cleanup can help with that worth checking out I will say just as sort of a disclaimer. We haven't used that one We've just started investigating in a little bit. So, you know, I can't give it a I don't know the cost there is a free version and there's a paid version But I think I've heard a lot of good things about it. So I think it's something that's worth checking out Alright moving on you made it a layout shift
00:26:33
Speaker
Yup, cumulative layout shift. Which sounds so technical. Yeah, right. I just like think of like pieces moving around. Yeah, but that's basically what it is. So if you've gone to a website and let's use our link clicking example again, you go to click on a link on a website and all of a sudden the page shifts because something else loaded and you click on the wrong link.
00:26:51
Speaker
You know, that would be an example of poor cumulative late or a poor cumulative layout shift issue, right? So what you want, like you want visual stability when you go to a website, like you want things to load and then the load in that spot that you see them loading in, right? So CLS or cumulative layout shift is going to measure that a good cumulative layout shift score is 0.1 or less.
Plugins for Performance Enhancement
00:27:15
Speaker
Okay. All right. Now, one of the primary ways, especially show users can prevent CLS errors is limiting the amount of dynamic content on a page. Can you explain more about what would be considered dynamic content? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'll get into that.
00:27:31
Speaker
I guess one thing that I'll mention too, and I've already alluded to this earlier, is that the error that I think most show it users have seen related to core web vitals is cumulative layout shift errors. And it's due to the way that show it renders websites across devices.
00:27:51
Speaker
And it's interesting how they do it. I would say that it's sort of, to a certain extent, what makes them unique. But I think what we're finding is that it's going to trigger this cumulative layout shift error. Now, Showit is aware of that. They have released in one of their help documents. They're monitoring it. They're figuring out how they're going to deal with this. So again, I think we should trust that they're going to be able to figure it out.
00:28:15
Speaker
No, I mean they truly are wonderful, which is why we recommend them so much. Yeah, exactly. However, there are things that you can do on your website that could potentially help. Like I said, one of those things is dynamic content. So for instance, let's say on your homepage, you want to feature your three most recent
00:28:30
Speaker
blog posts. Which is a pretty common thing to want to do. Sure, and those things dynamically update based on what your most recent post is. That would be an example, though, of dynamic content. Now, if that's at the very bottom of your homepage, probably not a huge deal, but certainly content above the fold, I think would be you might want to avoid dynamic content up there for the time being.
00:28:53
Speaker
Which honestly, that's not one of our favorite things to do when we build websites anyways. Unless it was for a blogger. Like I'm thinking that this would be tough maybe for a blogger. But like if you're a photographer, your three most recent posts may not be your best work. One of them could be a personal one. And so they may not always be the ones that you want people to see right away when they come onto your website. So if you are going to show the latest blog posts, we typically recommend picking ones that are your best work. Maybe that are more educational.
00:29:20
Speaker
and not bringing them in dynamically anyways. Yeah, and just including them there statically. Yeah, exactly. The other thing that can throw a CLS error is ads. So, you know, for instance, like people who are bloggers, bloggers, I'm thinking bloggers again, yeah, for bloggers,
00:29:38
Speaker
that just dynamically populate based on, I guess, whatever ad company that you're going through. So those can throw CLS errors as well. And there is some more information out there on how you can kind of prevent that. But I would say that in general, if you can limit dynamic content on a page, that's probably the best way or the way that many people will have to avoid cumulative layout shift errors.
00:30:04
Speaker
And WP Rocket can help with some of these as well. So I've linked to another help article from WP Rocket if you go that route that you can use on your website. I don't know if I mentioned whether WP Rocket works on show it. Have I talked about that? I don't think you kind of alluded. I don't know if you straight up answered. It's worth mentioning it.
00:30:21
Speaker
Technically should so I've talked to show it about this and in an in a update that's coming up on the show at end it will hopefully work consistently. We have heard reports though of people loading it to their website and it crashing their website and we had this issue for a while where every time we went to update the plugin.
00:30:40
Speaker
it will crush everything on our site. Yeah. And there's a reason for that. And I won't even go into the reason for that right now. But they know why. So in a future update, it might work. I would say, if you're going to try it on your show website, maybe talk to the show it team first, proceed with caution, you know, but hopefully in a future update, it will work. I will say that like, these WordPress plugins that do work on show it, they don't work for the show it
Prioritizing User Experience
00:31:03
Speaker
pages of your website, right? So they're only going to impact
00:31:06
Speaker
Unless you were to make your home page a WordPress page, which there's some workaround steps for that. Yeah, and even then it's unclear exactly how it impacts it. And it's only going to work on the advanced plan for Show It Correct, not the middle plan that just has a basic blog. Yeah, well, you can't add any plugins. You can't add any plugins, so you wouldn't be able to add this. Exactly. And same with the other plugin that we talked about, the WP Asset Cleanup.
00:31:29
Speaker
Yep, only on the advanced plan. And I will say that like when it comes to caching and things like that, like show it already implements service side caching, they already sets up content delivery networks, you know, they already set up service side caching, like there's things that they're already doing to, you know, optimize the performance of show it websites.
00:31:47
Speaker
Right, so I think a lot of people wouldn't need to add these plugins to their show websites. Yeah, I just think like, you know, for WP Rocket, like, it's probably I just don't know if it would give you enough of a boost for it to be worth it right now, you know, and risk the whole while your website crashing. Right. So anyways, if you want to, if you want to measure Core Web Vitals on your website, I would recommend you can either use Google's page speed insights test, we'll have a link to that in the show notes.
00:32:09
Speaker
You can go there. You can also go to, like I said, one of our favorites, which is GTmetrics, and they've incorporated Google's data into the results of their test as well. Another one of my favorites is webpagetest.org.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's webpagetest.org. Anyways, you can double check that in the show notes and in the article that corresponds with this episode as well, if you just want to get a sense of where you stand right now. Now, let's get into, I think, what really matters for people is so you're going to get these test results back and you're like, okay, what do I do? What do I do? Exactly.
00:32:42
Speaker
So here are the things and this is again, going back to kind of something we talked about at the beginning of this episode, which is, yes, this is new in a lot of ways, but how we go about optimizing our websites hasn't, it's not really changed all that much, you know, a lot of these recommendations we've been making, you know, long before, you always want your website to load quickly, you don't want to use too large of media, and you don't want to have too many things to update dynamically, like none of that has been good ever.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So like I said, let's start with show it then we'll talk about WordPress. And you know, if you have any questions beyond that, just let us know and we will try to record a part two to this episode. Cool. So for show it a few things they're going to do for you one server optimization, you know, they're always trying to figure out how to improve server performance for show websites. So that's taken care of check.
00:33:28
Speaker
CDNs are content delivery networks. That's something that they also take care of. The media library already hosted on Amazon S3 on a CDN, so all of that kind of stuff, check. Which means that your images are hosted not on your website, but on this other server. And they're delivered hopefully quicker geographically. You got a little technical there.
00:33:49
Speaker
Yeah, sorry, but point being, and I kind of glossed over it just because there's things you don't have to worry about, which is nice, right? Now, image optimization, that's something that you can still do now. Show it does optimize images loaded to show it.
00:34:03
Speaker
Yes, but I wouldn't upload your whole high resolution images. They're not going to optimize them maybe perfectly. They might not get them as small as you need or I still think it's best practice to optimize them yourself and then upload them and then if their system optimizes them more, like awesome.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, don't upload your full resolution. At the very least, definitely make sure you're optimizing your images for your blog because it's definitely not compressing your blog images. That's number one. That's one of the things that you can definitely do for the WordPress side of your website. Beyond that, reducing third-party scripts. If you have used the Advanced tab within Show It, if you go into Show It and into a given page on the right-hand side, there's an Advanced tab.
00:34:46
Speaker
under that there's custom head HTML you know things like that you know limiting the amount of scripts that you put there and this could be anything this could be the Facebook pixel could be Google Analytics it could be you know also embedding your Instagram feed we found those immediately slow down websites like a couple of seconds worth of slowness
00:35:03
Speaker
added. We talked about this in other episodes. We don't have to get into here, but we've started loading fake Instagram feeds essentially. It looks like an Instagram feed, just your best curated images. And nobody knows. Our clients always ask us to add a live Instagram feed. I'm like, well, we don't really recommend that anymore. We just do fake ones and nobody knows but you that it's fake. Again, it speeds up your website.
00:35:24
Speaker
So that's an example of third-party scripts, optimizing images we talked about, reducing dynamic content we talked about, reducing the complexity of your website. So you could go with a website that has fewer canvases, fewer design elements on it, fewer fonts. This like breaks my designer heart. Yeah, exactly. But that's the thing and that's the point is, you know, it's a balancing act, right?
00:35:42
Speaker
Well, you could instead of like a lot of people, especially for show it like to have content that is in those like views that you flip between. So having less content hidden in the views would also be helpful. Yeah, yeah. So WordPress websites. Now WordPress, like I said, you have a little bit more control. Some people like that. And that's why they go with WordPress. A few things. First thing you can do, find a good host.
00:36:06
Speaker
Find a solid WordPress host, somebody who you feel like prioritizes performance. If you're paying $3.99 for a hosting plan for a year, then ask yourself, why is it that cheap? I'm not saying you have to go find the most expensive one. This isn't an area of your business that you want to skimp on.
00:36:27
Speaker
And I would just say, I'm not saying you have to go buy the most expensive hosting plan out there, but you want to ask yourself, okay, why am I paying 99 cents a month for this hosting plan? So go find a good host, then beyond that, take advantage of some of the features that maybe your host provides. One of them is probably setting up a content delivery network.
00:36:45
Speaker
many hosts make this super easy to do so for flywheel I believe they use fastly and it's basically clicking a button alright I would say essentially but again a company a good host is gonna help you get something like that set up okay beyond that sizing optimizing images just as important for WordPress as it is for show it and any other website platform out there
00:37:06
Speaker
consider adding performance tools so the two plugins that I would recommend one I would definitely recommend like I said the other one we haven't used yet but have heard good things WP rocket and WP asset cleanup then in the same breath I'm going to say remove any unnecessary plugins
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, he's laughing because Alex always does a check on our website to see who we actually need all of the ones that are on ours. Exactly. And we do. Yeah, I think he's like, what really do we? So reduce third party scripts. Again, we've gotten rid of things like the live Instagram feed at the bottom of our website. You can reduce dynamic content on WordPress websites as well. I'd say on WordPress website, if you're using something like Elementor, you know, you can add awesome galleries and, you know, different plugins and things that pull on all sorts of things.
00:37:51
Speaker
But is it worth slowing down your site? Exactly. So you have to ask yourself that and then along the same lines, reducing the complexity of your website. Now, I would say that the things I listed towards the top are more important to me personally than the things I listed towards the bottom. That's good because I feel like number seven just also breaks my designer heart. Yeah. And so I'm glad that you made that number seven.
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I want to emphasize, all right, that fast website. I want to emphasize that the fastest website in the world is probably white with black text and aerial font. Maybe I don't know. No styles.
00:38:30
Speaker
I want to emphasize that the fastest website in the world is not necessarily the most optimized website, all right? Or I guess what I'm trying to say is a fast website is not necessarily an optimized website, all right? So when we're talking about optimization, we're talking about having a website that's going to get the conversion that you're seeking, okay? Whether that's somebody filling out the contact form or somebody purchasing something from your shop.
00:38:54
Speaker
And to that end, we should pay attention to and take seriously something like website speed, something like Core Web Vitals, and all of the other things that we should care about as business owners and Google cares about. But they're all to that end of, okay, how can we deliver a good user experience so that somebody meets that conversion goal?
00:39:14
Speaker
Something to keep in mind, hopefully that makes it less stressful. I imagine if you're hearing about this for the first time that maybe potentially you're panicking a little bit, I would encourage you not to. I can't emphasize enough, I'm not going to be losing sleep over this. We definitely
Feedback and Conclusion
00:39:30
Speaker
have work. Anybody can run a speed test on any website. We definitely have some work that we can do on our website, but we're prioritizing that where we feel like it should go. That's not like
00:39:41
Speaker
I wouldn't say it's even like a top three project for us right now. No. Yeah. So anyways, if you have questions, I know some more technical subject to drop those in the show notes or shoot us a DM on Instagram. And like I said, we will try to answer future questions that we get frequently in future episodes. And if it's a question we can answer pretty quickly, then we'll get back to you right away. That's good. All right.
00:40:08
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.