Everyone loves a fast, quick loading website. Wouldn’t you love it if your website loads in less than a second? Apparently, Google does too. In May 2020, Google announced the rollout of yet another update to its algorithm. Core Web Vitals that measure loading time (LCP), interactivity (FID) and visual stability (CLS) will be combined with existing search signals for page experience to enhance the end-user experience and search results.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics designed to help site owners measure the user experience. Core Web Vitals measure the interactivity and visual stability of your website.

In Google’s own words, “Core Web Vitals are a set of real-world, user-centred metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads (so you don’t accidentally tap that button when it shifts under your finger – how annoying!)”.

Effective from June 2021, this massive search ranking update will affect your website rankings in a big way. The core algorithm update will make page speed a significant factor for ranking high on Google Search results and affect conversion rates.

Here are the top factors that affect page ranking in 2021

• Security – Your website has no chance of ranking high on Google Search without an SSL certificate. Your website must be secure (HTTPS) to rank.
• Safe browsing – This factor includes protecting your website from phishing attacks. Google’s browsers and other web tools can help you create a safe experience for your users.
• Mobile-friendliness – Your website should be mobile friendly and load equally fast on both platforms. Optimising your website for mobile and ensuring that it is highly responsive and fast will greatly enhance page rank.
• No pop-ups (intrusive interstitials) – Pop-ups are annoying and delay load time. If your pop-up loads early, it will prevent the user from viewing your content.

Google PageSpeed Insights divides your page metrics into two types:

• Field Data
• Lab Data

Field data elements comprise of Core Web Vitals that include:

• FCP or First Contentful Paint – FCP is when your browser renders the initial information for your website. FCP includes text, images, backgrounds and SVGs and is a critical rank indicator.
• FID or First Input Delay – FID is the amount taken by your user to interact with your website. Interaction types include playing videos, clickable areas, forms etc.
• LCP or Largest Contentful Paint – LCP s is the amount of time that it takes for the largest bit of information on your website to load. Google uses this metric to rank pages.
• CLS or Cumulative Layout Shift – If your page elements load randomly (for example, if your first image loads last and the text in the centre loads first), it indicates poor coding. This problem can also be caused by ads, videos, images, contact forms and more.

Lab Data includes elements such as total blocking time, time to interactive and speed index.

• Speed Index or SI – Speed is one of the essential properties of your website and determines how long it takes for all elements of your page to load. Speed Index is in milliseconds. Google calculates speed according to the time taken to load all visual elements in the first fold. This index is significantly impacted by your web hosting speed.
• Time to interactive or TTI – TTI is the time taken for all interactive elements on your page to become functional. So the time from First Contentful Paint to Time to Interactive will also impact your website’s ranking.
• Total Blocking Time – Total blocking time measures the amount of time a user spends, from opening a webpage to interacting with it. TBT is the total time taken from First Contentful paint to Time to Interactive.

Web hosting speed and search engines

Even if you optimise images and code and fix CSS issues, website speed ultimately depends on your hosting provider and your hosting type. If your hosting type gives you limited bandwidth and limited processing capability, your web page loads will be slow. Hosting speed will directly impact your page score and rank.

How do shared hosting services impact Google rankings?

Often, low-cost shared hosting bogs down website speed and can cause you to lose out on page ranking. In fact, the June 2021 core algorithm update will make page speed even more important for ranking and converting. Shared hosting services can also dramatically increase downtime for high-bandwidth websites as resources are finite. This can badly impact your ranking.

How does VPS hosting boost SEO?

Although VPS hosting looks similar to shared hosting, it is not the same. A good analogy to explain this better is that shared hosting is like sitting in a crowded bus but whereas VPS hosting is like having your own car on the road. The resources allocated to you will remain dedicated to your website. This means that CPU cores, RAM and drive space allocated to your website are dedicated to you and not shared with other websites on the same virtual server. Additionally, VPS hosting services are often on faster servers, making your website load much quicker and dramatically reducing your Speed Index and Largest Contentful Paint scores under 1 second.

How can I improve my website speed?

It’s easy. Shift to a reliable web hosting provider such as Pack Web Hosting that can offer powerful VPS hosting at a great price. Shifting to a VPS server will possibly be the best decision that you make for your website. Your database performance, page load times, and access times will dramatically reduce, boost search ranking, and enhance end-user satisfaction rates.

Closing thoughts

While website optimisation will dramatically boost your page load speed, moving to a reliable VPS server will enhance the end-user experience tenfold. This means that both hosting speed and website code quality and deployment will play a significant role in your website’s success. Remember—no one likes a slow website. This holds for both your end-users and Google Search. What is crucial is to find the right hosting provider for your website and making your website as optimised as possible to ensure a high search ranking.

If you are looking for a VPS hosting provider that can help you boost website rankings, look no further. Pack Web Hosting has thousands of satisfied clients and years of experience in running quality VPS hosting services. Schedule a call with one of our hosting experts today!