What Are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics Google uses to measure the user experience of a webpage — specifically how fast it loads, how responsive it is to user input, and how visually stable it is. There are currently three main metrics:

LCP — Largest Contentful Paint

LCP measures how long it takes for the largest visible element on the page to load. This is usually a hero image, a large heading, or a video thumbnail. Google wants LCP under 2.5 seconds. Between 2.5–4 seconds needs improvement. Over 4 seconds is considered poor.

LCP is the metric that most frequently fails on slower-loading websites. The biggest culprits are large uncompressed images, slow server response times, and render-blocking scripts.

INP — Interaction to Next Paint

INP replaced FID (First Input Delay) as of 2024. It measures the overall responsiveness of a page — how quickly the page responds to user interactions like button clicks, form inputs, and link taps. Google wants INP under 200 milliseconds.

Poor INP is usually caused by too much JavaScript running on the main thread, blocking the browser from responding to user input quickly.

CLS — Cumulative Layout Shift

CLS measures visual stability — how much the page layout shifts around as it loads. You’ve experienced bad CLS when you go to tap a button and suddenly it moves because an image or ad loaded above it. Google wants CLS under 0.1.

Common causes: images without defined width and height attributes, ads loading without reserved space, and fonts swapping in late and causing text to shift.

How to Check Your Core Web Vitals

The best tools for checking:

• Google Search Console: Check the Core Web Vitals report (under Experience). This shows real-user data from Chrome users — more meaningful than lab data.
• PageSpeed Insights: Enter any URL at pagespeed.web.dev for both lab and field data, plus specific recommendations.
• Chrome DevTools Lighthouse: Built into Chrome — right-click → Inspect → Lighthouse tab. Good for development testing.

What to Prioritise If Scores Are Poor

For LCP (slow loading):

• Compress and properly size all images (WebP format where possible)
• Add the fetchpriority="high" attribute to your hero image
• Use a fast hosting provider or CDN
• Reduce or defer non-essential JavaScript

For INP (poor responsiveness):

• Reduce third-party scripts (chat widgets, analytics, social embeds)
• Break up long JavaScript tasks
• Use code splitting to only load JS when needed

For CLS (layout shifts):

• Add explicit width and height attributes to all images
• Reserve space for ads and embeds
• Use font-display: optional or preload your fonts

Do Core Web Vitals Actually Affect Rankings?

Yes, but they’re not the most powerful ranking factor. They function more as a tiebreaker — if two pages are roughly equal on relevance and authority, the one with better page experience is likely to rank higher. For most businesses, technical SEO fundamentals (indexing, content quality, internal links) are more impactful than chasing perfect Core Web Vitals scores.

That said, genuinely poor scores (especially on mobile) do have a real-world impact. A page that takes 8 seconds to load on mobile will lose visitors regardless of its ranking — and that bounce rate feeds back into how Google perceives the page.

Aim for “Good” scores rather than perfection. Fix the obvious performance issues, then focus your energy on content and relevance.

Step 1: Set Up or Claim Your Google Business Profile

This is the single most important thing for local visibility. Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is what appears in the map pack and Google Maps when someone searches for your type of business near them. If you haven’t claimed yours, search for your business name in Google Maps and look for the “Claim this business” option.

Once claimed, fill it out completely: business name (exactly as it appears in real life), category, address or service area, phone number, website, opening hours, and a description of your business. Don’t skip any of these — completeness is a real ranking factor.

Step 2: Add Good Photos

Once your profile is complete, upload at least 10–15 real photos. Include your exterior, your interior or workspace, and photos of your team or your work. A profile with good photos gets more clicks — and click-through rate contributes to rankings.

Step 3: Sort Out Your Website Basics

Your website doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to give Google the right signals about what you do and where you do it.

• Title tags: Each page needs a unique title that includes what you do and where. For your homepage, something like “Plumber in Manchester | Your Business Name” is better than just “Home” or “Welcome”.
• Service pages: Instead of one “Services” page that lists everything, create a separate page for each main service. “Boiler Repair Manchester”, “Drain Unblocking Manchester”, etc. This gives Google specific pages to rank for specific searches.
• Contact page: Include your business name, address (or service area), and phone number on your contact page — formatted consistently with how it appears on your GBP profile.

Step 4: Build Some Basic Citations

Citations are online mentions of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP). They help Google confirm your business is real and located where you say it is. The most important ones to have:

• Bing Places for Business
• Apple Maps (via Apple Business Connect)
• Facebook / Meta Business
• Yelp (if relevant to your industry)
• Industry-specific directories (e.g., Checkatrade or TrustATrader for tradespeople, Treatwell for beauty)

Make sure your NAP is identical across all of them.

Step 5: Ask for Reviews

Start asking your happy customers for Google reviews. The simplest way: share your Google review link directly (find it in your GBP dashboard under “Get more reviews”). Ask in person after a job, or send a follow-up message a few days after the service.

Don’t offer incentives — just ask genuinely. Consistency matters more than volume. Five new reviews per month over six months is better than 30 reviews in one week.

Realistic Expectations

If you do these things properly, you should start seeing movement within 4–8 weeks — especially if your competition is light. “Movement” at this stage means appearing for searches you weren’t appearing for before, and seeing your map pack ranking improve from outside the top 10 to the top 5 or 3.

SEO takes time. There’s no shortcut. But starting with these fundamentals gives you a solid base to build on.

What Is Crawl Budget?

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages Googlebot will crawl on your site within a given period. Google has limited resources — it can’t crawl every page of every website every day. So it prioritises based on a combination of the page’s perceived value and how frequently the site is crawled based on its authority and speed.

Two components affect crawl budget: crawl rate limit (how fast Googlebot crawls to avoid overloading your server) and crawl demand (how much Google wants to crawl your site based on popularity and content freshness).

When Does Crawl Budget Actually Matter?

For most small to medium websites — under 1,000 pages — crawl budget is rarely the primary problem. Google is generally capable of crawling and indexing a well-structured small site without issues.

Crawl budget becomes a real concern when:

• You have a large site (thousands of pages) and notice important pages aren’t getting indexed
• Your site has lots of duplicate content or URL parameters generating near-identical pages
• You’ve recently done a major migration and pages that should be indexed aren’t showing up
• Your GSC Coverage report shows a large number of “Discovered — currently not indexed” URLs

How to Check If Crawl Budget Is a Problem

Start with Google Search Console. Go to Settings → Crawl Stats to see how many pages Googlebot is crawling per day and whether there are any response code errors. If your total crawled pages is consistently low relative to your site size, that’s a signal worth investigating.

Also check your Coverage report. A large volume of “Discovered — currently not indexed” pages compared to your indexed pages often points to crawl or quality issues.

Common Crawl Budget Wasters

URL Parameters

E-commerce and faceted navigation sites often generate hundreds of thousands of near-duplicate URLs through filtering parameters (e.g., ?colour=red&size=large&sort=price). Googlebot can waste enormous amounts of crawl budget on these. Use canonical tags and GSC parameter handling to address this.

Redirect Chains

When Page A redirects to Page B which redirects to Page C, Google has to follow each step. Long redirect chains slow down crawling and can cause Googlebot to give up before reaching the final URL. Clean these up to point directly to the final destination.

Low-Quality or Thin Pages

If you have lots of thin, low-quality pages on your site, Google may deprioritise crawling. This is especially common on sites that have auto-generated category or tag pages with little unique content.

What to Do If You Have Crawl Issues

The most effective things to address crawl budget problems: implement canonical tags correctly on duplicate pages, fix redirect chains, block genuinely useless URLs via robots.txt, and improve the overall quality of your site’s content so Google treats it as worth crawling more frequently.

For most small sites: don’t worry about crawl budget and focus on content quality and basic technical health instead. For larger sites, it’s worth adding to your regular monitoring list.

Why Photos Matter for GBP Rankings

Photos serve two purposes on a GBP profile. First, they’re a completeness and activity signal for Google — a profile with recent, diverse photos looks more active and legitimate than one with three photos from three years ago. Second, they directly influence click-through rate in the map pack, which also feeds back into rankings over time.

Photo Categories That Seem to Help Most

Exterior Photos

These are the most practically useful. They help Google confirm your physical location and help customers recognise your premises before visiting. Upload clear photos of your shopfront or building, ideally during daytime with the business name visible. Multiple angles help.

Interior Photos

Interior photos give context about what the business is like inside. For service businesses (restaurants, clinics, salons, gyms), these photos significantly affect whether someone decides to visit. Upload enough that a potential customer can get a real sense of the space.

Team / People Photos

Profiles that include photos of real people — staff, team shots, photos of actual work being done — tend to feel more credible and get better engagement. This doesn’t mean professional headshots; natural, authentic photos of work in progress are often better received.

Work / Product Photos

If you provide a service (plumbing, construction, landscaping, catering), photos that show the actual work you do are valuable. For product-based businesses, clear photos of your products are important. These photos are what searchers want to see — they confirm you do what you say you do.

What Probably Doesn’t Help Much

Stock photos — generic images that don’t represent your actual business — seem to provide minimal benefit. Google likely has some ability to detect these, and they don’t build trust with potential customers. If you need professional-looking photos but don’t have a photographer, a modern smartphone in good lighting will produce usable results.

Practical Approach

Rather than trying to upload 50 photos in one day, a more natural approach is better. Upload a batch of quality photos when you start optimising the profile, then add a few new ones each month — new team members, seasonal changes, recent work completed. This keeps the profile looking active and gives Google fresh signals consistently.

The goal is to build a complete, realistic picture of your business — one that a potential customer could look through and decide to get in touch.

The Most Common Reasons Local Rankings Drop

Before getting into fixes, it’s worth being clear: local rankings are influenced by three main factors — relevance (does Google think your business matches the search?), distance (how close is the business to the searcher?), and prominence (how well-known and trusted is the business online?). Most optimisation work focuses on relevance and prominence because those are things you can actually control.

1. Wrong or Too-Broad Primary Category

The primary category on your GBP profile is one of the biggest ranking signals for local searches. I see businesses set this too broadly all the time. “Contractor” instead of “Roofing contractor”. “Restaurant” instead of “Italian restaurant”. “Doctor” instead of “Family practice physician”.

Google needs to know exactly what your business does. The more specific your primary category, the better your chances of showing up when someone searches for that specific thing.

What to do: Search for your main service + location in Google, look at what category your top local pack competitors are using, and match it as closely as possible.

2. Incomplete Service Listings

The Services section of your GBP profile is often completely empty or has one or two generic entries. This is wasted space. Every service you list is a potential relevance signal for related searches.

If you’re a plumber, you want entries for “boiler repair”, “drain unblocking”, “bathroom installation”, “emergency plumbing” — not just “Plumbing Services”.

3. Not Enough Photos (or Wrong Types)

Photos matter more than most people think. I’ve seen profiles go from low-ranking to competitive just from a substantial photo upload. Google favours profiles that look active and complete.

The types that seem to matter most: exterior shots (helps Google confirm your location), interior shots, team/people photos, and photos that show your work or products. Generic stock photos don’t help — they need to be real.

4. No Review Strategy

Reviews affect both prominence and click-through rate. Businesses with more recent, positive reviews tend to outperform those with older or fewer reviews — even if the older reviews are better in quality.

You don’t need to do anything unethical here. A simple process of asking happy customers directly — in person, via text, or in a follow-up email — works well when done consistently.

5. Inconsistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone)

If your business name, address, or phone number appears differently across your website, social profiles, and directory listings, it creates confusion for Google. Even small differences — “Street” vs “St”, “Ltd” vs no suffix — can add up.

Run a citation audit using BrightLocal or Moz Local to see where you’re listed and check for inconsistencies. Fix the major ones first (Facebook, Yelp, TripAdvisor, Apple Maps, Bing Places).

Where to Start

If all of the above feels like a lot: start with your primary category and your service listings. Those two changes alone have moved profiles multiple positions in the local pack, sometimes within a couple of weeks.

After that, focus on getting consistent photos uploaded over time and building a natural review cadence. The cumulative effect of doing these things properly is significant — and most competitors aren’t doing them well.