A big challenge for many SEO professionals is identifying what needs to change to move the needle.
This article recaps a topic from my SMX Advanced presentation on determining which URLs you should prioritize for Core Web Vitals.
Qualitative vs. quantitative SEO priorities
I’m a big fan of quantitative SEO changes impacting thousands of URLs simultaneously (especially for enterprise-level websites).
However, making quantitative improvements on thousands of URLs doesn’t mean the changes you make will actually improve the URLs, causing low or poor performance.
That’s where the Core Web Vitals opportunity map comes into play.
Meet the Core Web Vitals ‘best opportunity’ map
To determine which action to take, you must locate which URLs have scores that lower your Core Web Vitals metrics.
Taking it one step further, examine URLs that have the biggest lift potential.
The chart above illustrates various data segments to consider for Core Web Vitals improvements.
Notice it’s the last two segments on the right that have the opportunity to grow traffic if Core Web Vitals metrics improve:
URLs with an opportunity to improve organic rankings if real user monitoring (RUM) scores improve.
URLs with the biggest lift potential.
Below is a handy resource to help you understand each segment and identify the segment that warrants your qualitative attention.
To summarize the table above:
Many SEOs look at Core Web Vitals for any indexable URL. In reality, you should prioritize (and analyze) Core Web Vitals URLs that have RUM Data in Google CrUX. Unfortunately, this segment has too many URLs that won’t experience an increase in rankings and revenue.
Many SEOs focus on any indexable URL with low-scoring Core Web Vitals metrics from CrUX. However, this segment also has too many URLs that won’t increase rankings and revenue.
The best approach is to identify a segment of URLs with:
RUM data in Google CrUX with scores of “Needs Improvement” or “Poor.”
An opportunity to improve rankings if Core Web Vitals Metrics improve.
Keywords mapped to the URL with high search volume (which translates to high traffic and revenue potential).
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
How to identify URLs with the ‘biggest lift potential’
URLs with the biggest lift potential are those with an opportunity to increase traffic and revenue. Attributes of these URLs include (but are not limited to):