How WP Rocket Boosts Core Web Vitals For Better SEO?

Have you ever encountered a website that took far too long to load? 

It’s quite frustrating, right? 

Absolutely, Google recognizes that! They acknowledge the significance of providing visitors with a quick and seamless website experience. 

That’s the reason they created Core Web Vitals.

Basically, it’s a set of rules that measure how quickly your website loads, how stable it is, and how responsive it is to your visitors’ clicks. 

However, it’s definitely a lot of work to optimize your website to meet these standards and improve Core Web Vitals. 

This is where WP Rocket steps in to help. 

In this article, we’ll explain how WP Rocket helps your WordPress website perform its best and helps you achieve those Core Web Vitals. 

So that your website becomes user-friendly and earns higher rankings on the search engine results page. 

Let’s go!

A. What are Core Web Vitals?

Before we begin, let’s quickly understand the Core Web Vitals, also popularly known as CWV, and a quick history behind it. 

As we all know Google strives to provide the best possible search experience for users. 

This means when someone searches for a query, it not only shows the websites with relevant results. But also ensures that the chosen websites are quick, dependable, and easy to use.

Previously, website performance was evaluated using general metrics like overall loading time. However, such metrics didn’t completely reflect the particular issues that users face, such as slow interactions or unexpected moving layouts.

To tackle this issue, Google introduced Core Web Vitals (CWV) in  May 2020. 

These consist of 3 vital metrics that measure key aspects of user experience online.

• (Largest Contentful Paint – LCP): This metric checks the loading aspect i.e. how quickly the main content of a page loads.
• (Interaction to Next Paint – INP): This metric checks the interactivity aspect i.e. how quickly a website responds to user interactions.
•  (Cumulative Layout Shift – CLS): This metric checks the visual aspect of how much of the content on a page shifts around unexpectedly during loading.

Understanding the 3 Wheels (Metrics) of Core Web Vitals

Now, let’s understand the given metrics in more detail one by one.

1) LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

Imagine visiting a site, but the main image or headline takes several seconds to load. You might think the site is slow and leave even before exploring it.

Therefore, the first metric is the Largest Contentful Paint, also known as LCP. It measures the time it takes for the largest visible content on your page whether it’s an image or headline to load fully. 

This metric reflects how fast users can access the most important part of your website.

A slow LCP can frustrate users and make them leave your site leading to bounce rates. Meanwhile, a good LCP ensures visitors see meaningful content quickly.

As per Google, an ideal LCP should be less than or equal to 2.5 seconds for a good user experience.

Because, Google prioritizes sites with fast LCP, as it improves user satisfaction, directly affecting rankings.

2) INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

Suppose, let’s say you visited a website and clicked a button but the response time is too slow. In the past, metrics like First Input Delay (FID) were used to measure interaction.

However, now INP has replaced FID officially as part of the updates to Core Web Vitals by Google in March 2024 to reflect user experiences better.

As INP provides a more comprehensive and accurate measure of how quickly a website responds to user actions. Such as clicks, taps, or form submissions.

Since users expect instant feedback when interacting with a website. If there’s a delay, then it can discourage further engagement. 

As per Google, INP should be less than or equal to 200 milliseconds for a responsive and smooth experience.

Because, a responsive site enhances user experience, reduces bounce rates, and improves rankings.

3) CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

You might have this experience when you try to click a link on a website, and it moves just as you click. Ultimately, causing you to hit something else instead. This is annoying and creates a poor user experience.

And that’s where the last metric i.e. Cumulative Layout Shift, also known as CLS, comes into action. 

This metric measures how much the elements on a page move around unexpectedly while it’s loading. This includes shifts caused by loading ads, images, or other elements.

Since layout shifts can lead to accidental clicks, poor readability, or frustration. A stable layout keeps the user’s focus and avoids unnecessary distractions. 

As per Google, CLS should be less than or equal to 0.1 second to ensure a stable visual experience.

Because Google values visually stable websites, as they reduce user frustration and improve engagement.

By focusing on these core factors, Core Web Vitals provides a clear and user-centered way to evaluate website performance.

Why Do Core Web Vitals Matter?

Summing up, here’s why Core Web Vitals matter. Basically, it’s for 2 main reasons. 

1. For User Experience. These metrics directly impact how visitors perceive your website. A fast, responsive, and stable site keeps users engaged and encourages them to return.
2. For SEO Rankings. Google uses Core Web Vitals as part of its ranking algorithm for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). So, Google will see your website as helpful and move it higher in search results. And a higher ranking means more people will visit your website.

Having considered all these, in June 2021, Google began using Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. They are now part of the Page Experience Signals, along with other factors like mobile-friendliness, HTTPS security, and safe browsing.

B. Overview of WP Rocket Plugin

Now that we have a clear understanding of Core Web Vitals (CWV) and why it matters, you might feel overwhelmed on how to deal with it, right?

But, as mentioned earlier, this is the exact phase where the WP Rocket plugin steps in to make your job too easy and uncomplicated to optimize your CWV. 

What exactly is WP Rocket?

To be precise, WP Rocket is a premium all-in-one performance optimization WordPress plugin designed to improve your site’s speed and performance.

One of its main features is caching, which saves a static version of your website’s content so it can load faster for visitors. 

This reduces the work the server has to do for each request. Consequently, this helps deliver a smoother and quicker experience for users. 

According to their official website, it’s trusted by over 4.6 million website owners and developers worldwide. No wonder, why it stands out as one of the favorite solutions for improving website speed and user experience.

We also checked its ratings in Trustpilot TrustScore, where we found WP Rocket is rated 4.8 out of 5 stars based on 2400+ real users. What’s more, 94% of users have given it a solid 5 out of 5. And that’s amazing!

One of the most appreciated aspects of WP Rocket is its clean and super easy-to-use dashboard. 

From the moment you activate the plugin, it immediately begins to take effect. 

That’s to say, 

• Even if you’re an absolute beginner, you can totally rely on the default configurations for immediate results. 
• Meanwhile, if you’re an advanced user, then you can further tweak settings to match specific needs. 

Additionally, it is crafted to be compatible with a variety of WordPress themes, plugins, and hosting. 

Therefore, regardless of the type of website you have, WP Rocket adjusts to your needs without creating conflicts or needing extensive technical knowledge.

Ultimately, the point we want to convey is that even non-technical users can easily enhance their site’s speed and CWV metrics with minimal effort.

Pricing:

Having said that, are you wondering about its cost?

WP Rocket provides you with several pricing schemes that you can choose as per your needs. Such as:

• Single Plan: Costs $59/year. Includes product updates and support for 1 website. It’s ideal for individuals or small businesses managing a single website. 
• Growth Plan: Costs $199/year. Includes product updates and support for 10 websites. It’s the best professionals or small agencies managing up to 10 websites.
• Multi Plan: Costs $299/year. Includes product updates and support for 50 websites. It’s perfect for larger agencies or developers managing up to 50 websites.

Meanwhile, if you want it for more websites then also you can opt for it via the pricing page under drop-down of Multi Plan scheme. 

Note that all plans include premium customer support and access to all updates released during the subscription period.

Also, it provides you with a 14-day money-back guarantee, so you can try it without a second thought. 

C. How WP Rocket Improves Core Web Vitals?

As mentioned, WP Rocket is designed to simplify the complex process of optimizing your website to meet Core Web Vitals. It works to improve loading speed, interactivity, and layout stability. 

Through a combination of automated tasks and advanced features, WP Rocket ensures your website meets Google’s standards. That too with minimal effort on your part.

Below, we’ll see how each WP Rocket feature helps improve Core Web Vitals like LCP, INP, and CLS.

1) Automatic Optimization

One of the significant highlights of WP Rocket is that, right after you install the plugin, it handles 80% of optimization tasks without you moving a finger.

That’s to say, your website should automatically immediately be faster. 

To be more exact, this is what it does as part of automatic optimization:

Page Caching

First, page caching is automatically activated for both desktop and mobile users. 

This means that WP Rocket saves a ready-to-go version of your page to make your website load much faster. Instead of loading your pages from scratch each time someone visits. Ultimately, this leads to a much quicker LCP. 

Browser Caching

Second, WP Rocket automatically enables browser caching, which stores certain files in your visitors’ browsers. 

To describe it more, it allows the browser to store static assets like images CSS, and JavaScript locally. Ultimately, what it does is it removes the need to download these files again on subsequent page visits. 

This speeds up the experience for those who browse multiple pages or visit your website more than once. And this results in faster loading times and better LCP.

GZIP Compression

Third, GZIP compression is also automatically enabled, which compresses your files. This makes them smaller and faster to download. 

As a result, this speeds up load time, enables text compression, and reduces data transfer when someone visits your website. Further, this leads to a quicker LCP. 

Optimizes Critical Images

Next, WPRocket optimizes critical images by automatically detecting, preloading, and prioritizing the LCP element of every page.  This results in faster rendering which is crucial for passing LCP.

Lazy Rendering

Likewise, it automatically applies lazy rendering to improve your INP. 

Basically, what this feature does is it prevents the browser work fast by not loading everything on the page at once. Instead, it will only load what the user can see right now and waits to load the rest until it’s needed. 

This results in less work for the browser, so your page loads faster and responds quicker to interactions.

Needless to say, with these automatic optimizations, your site is already much faster. 

Other than that, it also provides other automatic optimization features. Such as Cross-Origin support for web fonts, WooCommerce refreshment cart fragments cache, optimizing Google font files, and disabling WordPress emoji. 

All of this, in some way or another, helps you to boost Core Web Vitals for better SEO. 

2. JavaScript Defer and Delay

To let you know, JavaScript files can significantly slow down the page loading speed. 

So, when the browser encounters a JavaScript file, it often pauses rendering the page to download and execute the script. 

As a result, this can delay the appearance of content, impacting LCP. Plus, makes the page unresponsive to user interactions, impacting INP. 

Thankfully, WP Rocket makes it easy with built-in features to delay and defer JavaScript files. And the process is super easy. 

For that, all you’ve to do is go to your WordPress dashboard then navigate to the ‘Settings > WP Rocket’ and click on the ‘File Optimization’ tab. 

And, scroll down to the JavaScript section and check the box for ‘Load JavaScript deferred’. 

This ensures non-essential JavaScript doesn’t block your page from loading. As a result, what happens is that more important elements load first. This reduces delays in user interactions and improves INP. 

Likewise, in the same JavaScript section, find the option for ‘Delay JavaScript execution’ and check the box. 

Besides, you’ll also see other setting options like one click exclusions, but don’t worry much about it. You can leave it as default. And once done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button. 

With that, you’ll see the ‘Settings Saved’ notification in the top bar. 

This tells WP Rocket to load JavaScript only when the users interact with the page like scrolling or clicking. Further, this results in quick loading of your site’s visible content which ultimately improves LCP. 

3) Minification of CSS and JavaScript

CSS and JavaScript files can be quite large due to unnecessary characters like spaces, line breaks, and comments. These extra characters increase file size which leads to longer download times and slower page loading. 

So, the key solution to this is minification of CSS and JavaScript. And WPRocket makes it super easy to achieve this. 

Just as before, all you’ve to do is go to the ‘WP Rocket > File Optimization’. Then, under the ‘CSS Files’ tab, check the box for ‘Minify CSS Files’. This makes the smaller files load faster and leads to direct improvement of LCP. 

Similarly, from the ‘JavaScript Files’ tab, check the box for ‘Minify JavaScript Files’. This makes JS files smaller which also leads to better LCP and INP.

And, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page. With that done, you’ll see the ‘Settings Saved’ notification at the top bar. With that, WP Rocket will automatically apply the minification to your CSS and JavaScript files.

4) Removing Unused CSS

Websites often include CSS rules that are not used on specific pages. In fact, these unused CSS rules increase the overall file size which leads to longer download times and impacts page rendering. Plus, unused CSS can sometimes cause unexpected layout shifts that negatively impact CLS. 

To your rescue, WP Rocket helps you identify and remove unused CSS rules from your website. 

For that, all you’ve to do is again go to the ‘WP Rocket > File Optimization’. Then, under the CSS Files tab, check the box for ‘Optimize CSS Delivery’.

With that, you’ll see the ‘Remove Unused CSS’ option, and click on the ‘Activate Remove Unused CSS’. 

And finally, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page. 

It might take some time depending upon your site’s size. Once done, WP Rocket now analyzes your pages and removes any CSS that isn’t used. 

And ultimately, this leads to faster downloads, quicker page rendering, and a better LCP. Also, indirectly it even helps to prevent unexpected layout shifts that result in improvement of CLS. 

5) Font Preloading for Faster Rendering

If a browser has to wait for a font to download before rendering text, then it can delay the display of content. This negatively impacts LCP. 

On top, if the text reflows i.e. changes sizes or position after the font loads, then this can cause unexpected layout shifts that impact CLS. 

Thus, one of the subtle yet major issues that negatively impact your Core Web Vitals score is web fonts.

WP Rocket well recognizes this issue and thereby provides you with a font preloading feature. 

For that all you’ve to do is go to the ‘Settings > WP Rocket > Preload’ option. Then, scroll down to the ‘Preload Fonts’ section. 

Next, you need to identify and paste the font files URL you want to preload (for example otf, wtf, svg, woff, woff2).  

Once done, hit the ‘Save Changes’ button to save your changes. 

With this simple action, now your fonts will load earlier that speeds up text rendering. Ultimately, this improves your LCP and CLS. 

6) Lazy Loading for Images

Needless to say, images, especially large ones can significantly slow down page loading. In fact, when a page loads, the browser typically downloads all images at once, even those that are not visible to the user like the images below the fold. 

As a result, this can consume significant bandwidth and delays the rendering of visible content ultimately that impacts LCP.

At this exact phase, WP Rocket’s lazy loading feature steps in. 

All you’ve to do is go to the ‘Settings > WP Rocket > Media’ and under the ‘LazyLoad’ tab, you need to check the option for ‘Enable for Images’. 

Besides, you can also check the box for ‘Enable for CSS background images’ and ‘Enable for iframes and videos’. Also, you’ve got the option to ‘Replace YouTube iframe with preview image’.

This feature is particularly useful if your site uses embedded content like YouTube videos. 

Also, if you have images that need to load immediately like a logo or banner, then you can add their URLs to the Exclude Images field.

And don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to save your changes. 

WP Rocket will start applying lazy loading to your site. Now, what lazy loading does is delays the loading of images that are not currently visible within the user’s viewport. 

This reduces the time required to load visible content, improving LCP. Plus, it ensures important visuals appear instantly which leads to a smooth experience and improves INP. 

7) Fixing Images Without Dimensions

When images are inserted into a webpage, sometimes they happen to be without the specification of their width and height attributes. 

As a result, the browser doesn’t know how much space to allocate for the image initially. Further, this leads to the unexpected layout shifts that impact CLS.

Thankfully, WP Rocked identifies and fixes these issues to ensure a more stable and visually smooth website.

For this, all you’ve to do is go to the ‘WP Rocket > Media’ and scroll down to the Image Dimensions section. 

Next, you need to check the box for ‘Add missing image dimensions’ and hit the ‘Save Changes’ button. 

Afterward, WP Rocket automatically scans your site and adds dimensions to images where needed. 

Consequently, this action prevents unexpected layout shifts, improves visual stability, and contributes to overall better user experience. That further leads to a positive impact on the CLS metric. 

When you implement these optimizations with WP Rocket, it addresses the key factors that contribute to improved Core Web Vitals scores. 

Cherry on top, you get faster load times, smoother interactions, and a more visually stable user experience for your website visitors.  

D. Testing the Core Web Vitals Before & After WP Rocket Optimization

After optimizing our website using WP Rocket, we conducted a comparison performance of before and after WP Rocket optimization.

So as to understand the impact of WP Rocket optimization and ensure whether the changes improved the Core Web Vitals or not.

Here’s what we did and the results we observed. 

We used Google PageSpeed Insights to analyze our website. After entering the URL and running the test, the results showed as below;

Before WP Rocket Optimization

The initial performance metrics for both mobile and desktop platforms were less than ideal. The key findings are as follows:

After WP Rocket Optimization

Post-optimization, we observed significant improvements across all metrics, as shown below:

On top, we used Web Vitals extension to measure the Core Web Vitals metrics after WP Rocket optimization and this is what we found:

I. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 2.308 seconds

The LCP was reduced to 2.308 seconds, which is well below the recommended score of 2.5 seconds. This means the largest visible element on the page loads quickly which gives users a fast first impression.

II. Interaction to Next Paint (INP): 8 ms

The INP was optimized to 8 milliseconds, far below the recommended 200 ms. This reflects a highly responsive website that reacts instantly to user interactions like clicks or taps.

III. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): 0

The CLS was completely eliminated, now standing at 0 where the ideal value is less than 0.1. This ensures the layout is stable, with no unexpected shifts during page load. Further, this also means visitors get a smooth experience.

This is to say, our website definitely passed the Core Web Vitals Assessment. 

This result confirms that WP Rocket’s optimizations have made the website faster, more responsive, and more stable. Ultimately, this guarantees a better user experience and compliance with Google’s ranking factors. 

E. Summary of WP Rocket’s Features & Its Impact on Core Web Vitals and SEO

Before we conclude, let’s have a quick recap of the WP Roclet’s features and its impact on Core Web Vitals and SEO.

F. Final Thoughts

Needless to say, WP Rocket has proven itself as a powerful and user-friendly tool to improve your website performance. And achieve better Core Web Vital scores.

As you can see it too, how it handles tricky tasks like a pro without you needing to touch a single line of code.

On top, we passed the CWV test with the results that included an LCP of 2.308 seconds, INP of 8 ms, and CLS of O. This clearly portrays that WP Rocket is definitely something that your website needs. 

Have you already been using WP Rocket? If yes, then do share your experience below. 

And if you haven’t, then go and try it out. We promise, it’s worth a go for your time and investment.  

Want to know more about this plugin? Then, be sure to check out our comprehensive article on WP Rocket review. 

Also, check out our other reads such as how to increase website speed and the best speed optimization plugins. 

Last but not least, follow us on our social media handles Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) to stay updated with our content.