Technical SEO · 7 min read
Core Web Vitals explained for small business owners
A jargon-free explanation of Core Web Vitals for UK small business owners — what LCP, INP and CLS mean and how to fix poor scores.
By Jack Frampton, Multi-Channel Marketer at Queen's College, Taunton · Published 15 June 2026
Core Web Vitals are Google's way of measuring whether your site feels fast and stable. They're a ranking factor and a conversion factor. Here they are in plain English.
LCP — Largest Contentful Paint
How long the biggest visible element takes to render. Target: under 2.5 seconds. Most fixes come from optimising hero images, lazy-loading below-the-fold media and using a good UK CDN.
INP — Interaction to Next Paint
How quickly the page responds when a user taps or clicks. Target: under 200ms. Heavy JavaScript and third-party scripts are usually the culprit — audit your tag manager.
CLS — Cumulative Layout Shift
How much things jump around as the page loads. Target: under 0.1. Set width and height on every image and reserve space for ads, embeds and fonts.
How to test and fix
Run PageSpeed Insights and check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. Fix the page templates with the most traffic first — homepage, top blog posts and key landing pages.
Frequently asked questions
- LCP — Largest Contentful Paint?
- How long the biggest visible element takes to render. Target: under 2.5 seconds. Most fixes come from optimising hero images, lazy-loading below-the-fold media and using a good UK CDN.
- INP — Interaction to Next Paint?
- How quickly the page responds when a user taps or clicks. Target: under 200ms. Heavy JavaScript and third-party scripts are usually the culprit — audit your tag manager.
- CLS — Cumulative Layout Shift?
- How much things jump around as the page loads. Target: under 0.1. Set width and height on every image and reserve space for ads, embeds and fonts.
- How to test and fix?
- Run PageSpeed Insights and check the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console . Fix the page templates with the most traffic first — homepage, top blog posts and key landing pages.