If you've heard chatter in the blogging world about Core Web Vitals but don't know where to even start learning about it, let alone how to get your site ready for it, I put together a free two-part crash course just for bloggers.
In two quick videos – or in written format if video isn't your thing – you'll discover:
What are these “Core Web Vitals” that have become such a hot topic in the blogging world lately?
Why on earth would you willingly spend your time thinking about something like this?
And most importantly: Will Core Web Vitals affect you right now, or can you put this on the backburner and revisit later on down the road if necessary?
This crash course is available to the bloggers in the Sticky Blogging community, so if you're already getting my email updates, just enter your email address below to unlock the crash course and get started.
But if you're new to the Sticky Blogging community, welcome! You can enter your email address below to get my once-in-a-while newsletter for busy bloggers, plus unlock the free crash course as a bonus.
Core Web Vitals: What Are They + Why Do They Matter?
The other day, someone asked me: “If I do nothing, how much will this affect a blogger like me?” Inside this video, you'll learn what Core Web Vitals are and why they matter to bloggers.
Note: I know you might be anxious to jump ahead to the next video, but I recommend starting with this first one because what we cover here will serve as a foundation for the next step, and you'd likely end up needing to double-back to this first video anyway.
To speed up the video, click the gear icon in the lower right corner then set the Speed to your preference.
Note: When Google first announced Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor, the rollout date they gave was May 2021, which is what you'll hear in this video. But on April 19, Google rescheduled the rollout to start in June.
Core Web Vitals: Will It Impact You?
The big question now is: Do you need to worry about this whole Core Web Vitals thing? What would honestly happen if you just ignored it?
Inside this video, I'll step you through three guidelines that will help you determine whether you need to worry about Core Web Vitals now – or if you can put it on the backburner to tackle later. For example, because I followed those three guidelines, I realized I could ignore Core Web Vitals for my Sticky Blogging site, but I did need to worry about it for my Happy You, Happy Family site.
Here are the two tools you'll need inside this video:
Full disclosure: No “easy button” exists for Core Web Vitals, unfortunately. Nobody can give you a list of three easy steps that will magically fix everything all at once. With that said, following the streamlined process inside this workshop will help you zero in on the specific underlying issues that are hurting your scores so you can fix them and get back to doing what you love about blogging.
If Video Isn't Your Favorite…
I hear you because I'm the same way. If you learn better from the written format, here's a written transcript of the videos above. With that said, you may want to refer back to the video for the hands-on portions where I step you through how to determine the impact of Core Web Vitals in your specific situation.
Kelly Holmes
12 Comments
Oh boy…I can’t even get to the first step to check my insights- I get a lighthouse returned error on the homepage as well as specific post urls. I haven’t seen this mentioned regarding core vitals. Do you know what I should look at or have you seen this at all?
This has been so incredibly helpful! I’d love to finish analyzing our site, but I’m stuck.
Our Analytics looks different than yours. We are running Google Analytics 4. There is no pie chart. The charts below say “New Users by User Source” and “Sessions by Session Medium”.
I have the option to “View user acquisition” in the first box or “View traffic acquisition” in the second box. I am unable to click on Organic Seach in either.
When I click on either of those, I do not see “Primary Dimension” anywhere.
Hi RaShell! I haven’t switched over to Google Analytics 4 yet, but I believe this will get you the report you’re interested in: Scroll down the “Home” page a bit until you see this section: “WHICH PAGES AND SCREENS GET THE MOST VIEWS?”
If you click the “View pages and screens” link in that section, that will take you to the “Pages and screens” report (which is also accessible from the left-hand side by clicking “Engagement»Pages and screens”).
This shows you all views by page, so then to limit it to just those from organic search visitors, click the “All Users” button near the top of that page. On the right-hand side, search for the “Session source/medium” dimension in the top drop-down, then pick “google / organic” in the second drop-down. Click the “Apply” button to show all views by page for just the visitors from Google.
From there, you can adjust the dates in the upper right corner, and you should be good to go!
When I opened Google Analytics, I didn’t have the same options you named. Under primary dimension, there is no option “keyword.” It says “top channels.” So, I can’t use the pagespeed insights because I don’t have a list of top posts. And are sessions the same as pageviews? Nothing seems to match up??
Hi Jennifer! This might be easier to tackle if you can keep the video in one browser window and open Google Analytics in another browser window so they’re side by side. 🙂 From your description, it sounds like you might be on the screen shown at the 2:05 mark in the second video above.
From that screen, if you scroll down below the pie chart (shown starting around the 2:32 mark), you’ll see a list in table format. In that list, you’ll click “Organic Search”, and that will take you to the screen where you can set the “Primary Dimension” to “Landing Page” (that’s shown starting at 2:53).
Ah! So, I was just using the transcript and not the video to get the directions. Got it now. I had already just put my top post in the pagespeed insights and checked it. I did notice that when I clicked the little arrow in analytics just now to get the link to that top post, it included “wp-content/cache/all” in the link, which gave me a different (better) score. But regardless, I have a lot of work to do! Looking forward to your workshop! Thanks so much!
Oh boy…I can’t even get to the first step to check my insights- I get a lighthouse returned error on the homepage as well as specific post urls. I haven’t seen this mentioned regarding core vitals. Do you know what I should look at or have you seen this at all?
This is the best explanation I have ever read about this as well as the only one I have ever understood!
Anita, I’m so glad to hear this was helpful for you!
Hi Kelly-
This has been so incredibly helpful! I’d love to finish analyzing our site, but I’m stuck.
Our Analytics looks different than yours. We are running Google Analytics 4. There is no pie chart. The charts below say “New Users by User Source” and “Sessions by Session Medium”.
I have the option to “View user acquisition” in the first box or “View traffic acquisition” in the second box. I am unable to click on Organic Seach in either.
When I click on either of those, I do not see “Primary Dimension” anywhere.
Thank you so much for your help.
Hi RaShell! I haven’t switched over to Google Analytics 4 yet, but I believe this will get you the report you’re interested in: Scroll down the “Home” page a bit until you see this section: “WHICH PAGES AND SCREENS GET THE MOST VIEWS?”
If you click the “View pages and screens” link in that section, that will take you to the “Pages and screens” report (which is also accessible from the left-hand side by clicking “Engagement»Pages and screens”).
This shows you all views by page, so then to limit it to just those from organic search visitors, click the “All Users” button near the top of that page. On the right-hand side, search for the “Session source/medium” dimension in the top drop-down, then pick “google / organic” in the second drop-down. Click the “Apply” button to show all views by page for just the visitors from Google.
From there, you can adjust the dates in the upper right corner, and you should be good to go!
When I opened Google Analytics, I didn’t have the same options you named. Under primary dimension, there is no option “keyword.” It says “top channels.” So, I can’t use the pagespeed insights because I don’t have a list of top posts. And are sessions the same as pageviews? Nothing seems to match up??
Hi Jennifer! This might be easier to tackle if you can keep the video in one browser window and open Google Analytics in another browser window so they’re side by side. 🙂 From your description, it sounds like you might be on the screen shown at the 2:05 mark in the second video above.
From that screen, if you scroll down below the pie chart (shown starting around the 2:32 mark), you’ll see a list in table format. In that list, you’ll click “Organic Search”, and that will take you to the screen where you can set the “Primary Dimension” to “Landing Page” (that’s shown starting at 2:53).
Hope that helps!
Ah! So, I was just using the transcript and not the video to get the directions. Got it now. I had already just put my top post in the pagespeed insights and checked it. I did notice that when I clicked the little arrow in analytics just now to get the link to that top post, it included “wp-content/cache/all” in the link, which gave me a different (better) score. But regardless, I have a lot of work to do! Looking forward to your workshop! Thanks so much!
Thanks, Kelly! I look forward to the email.
Hi Brandice! I’m putting the finishing touches on now and should have an announcement out within the next day or so. 🙂
I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather learn this from than you, Kelly! Always practical and reasonable, yet with good business strategy.
Charlotte, thank you for the kind words! 🙂