Top 5 Content Optimization Tools for SEO

It is necessary to use content optimization tools to rank higher on SERPs. Optimizing your blog content and web pages using the SEO content optimizer is vital to the success of your content SEO strategy because you need to keep an eye on your competitors. In this post, let’s learn with seobase what content optimization is and what the best content optimization tools are.

What Is Content Optimization?

Understanding and improving content performance to interact with audience intentions is crucial to getting the number of clicks and traffic you aim for. Getting a higher ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs) and improving the readability of the content is not a simple process but is also not impossible. Now, many content optimization tools facilitate the content optimization process.

Here are some things that you need to optimize your content to address them:

  • Customer Needs: your content needs to adapt to the customer’s changed needs. 
  • Search Intent: your content should be optimized to meet user intent 
  • Competitors: it’s a risk of falling behind if your content is not optimized. 
  • Search Engine Updates: static content will lose relevance as search engine updates make a piece of content irrelevant.
  • Market Trends: your content needs to stay current if you want to rank above your competitors.

Top 10 Content Optimization Tools For SEO

Searching for specific content may take a long time to arrive at valuable and helpful content. Here comes your role; you have to work to benefit your audience and not make them spend a lot of time getting some information. Dozens of content optimization tools are available on the market to help you write quality content on your blog or landing pages. seobase listed the 5 best content optimization tools you can use to research, identify, and optimize content for your blog or web pages right now.

content optimization solutions

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Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC) is a great free tool to analyze SERPs performance of your site and content. Moreover, it contains cutting-edge features helping you know page speed, and structured data could impact your online performance. Furthermore, you can define the user intent and be aware of the organic traffic with impression and click data of specific queries. 

However, you can’t filter multiple search query terms to determine keyword cannibalization or misspellings quickly. In addition, it doesn’t display a complete SEO backlink profile. Here are a few says GSC to optimize your content marketing strategy: 

  • Keyword For Each Page.
  • Content Popularity.
  • Find Content Gaps.
  • Customer Search Intent.

seobase SEO Tools

seobase serves 15,000+ satisfied customers globally. Leaders of many industries rely on seobase for rank tracking and SERPs analysis. You can create your search tracking in seconds and get daily updates on how your website performs across search engines. 

Furthermore, you can track desktop and mobile platforms to get a full picture of your site’s performance. All of seobase SEO tools will allow you to create a quality piece of content. You can explore your target keywords and use them to optimize your content to meet the audience’s needs. Here are some of the seobase SEO content tools and features: 

  • Keyword explorer tool
  • SERP checker tool
  • Rank Tracker tool
  • Site profiler tool
  • Backlink checker tool

content optimization solutions

Grammarly

Content marketers need to create a quality piece of content to drive organic traffic and rank high on SERPs. However, that content must be readable to engage with the target audience, Grammarly offers this. 

Grammarly is one of the most critical content optimization solutions. Grammarly makes content optimization much more manageable by offering detailed, real-time suggestions for improving content quality. The content optimizer doesn’t miss any spelling or grammar errors unless it fixes them immediately.

It offers you edits and suggestions using AI support to improve your choice of words and the context and tone of the content. As a content optimizer for search engine algorithms, Grammarly uses contextual cues and typing tone as ranking factors.

Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor helps you write better content and drive traffic and more website visitors. It is a free online tool to see if it has everything you need to make high-quality content. 

The tool allows you to find the common grammatical issues and sentence structure that can distract your readers. In addition, it enhances the readability level. 

The Hemingway Editor is such an efficient content optimization tool. However, it lacks a widget for Chrome and Safari. As a result, you must copy/paste your content manually to the online or desktop program to check it. 

The Editor tool is AI-powered, but it only uses a handful of grammar choices when grading your content, so you could be missing other mistakes if you depend only on this tool. The tool doesn’t offer suggestions on how to fix the problem for the errors highlighted by the tool. This can be disturbing when you need to resolve issues quickly.

Google Docs

Google Docs is not the first content optimization tool that comes to your mind when you think about content optimization solutions. However, it offers features like a word processor, spreadsheets, and forms so you can communicate with your team and keep your projects on track.

Content marketers always seek the easiest way to manage multiple projects at once. Sometimes the content creators need to keep a list of dozens of topics to expand or manage writers. Google Docs gives content writers what they need exactly to help them and their teams to produce optimized content.

Conclusion

Choosing the best content optimization tools suitable for growing your business and making the most of your marketing budget is not impossible, but it is challenging. You can always stay informed of previously published content by using Google Search Console and other tools to get actual performance metrics. seobase provides you with the necessary SEO content optimization solutions to improve the content that you publish on your website.

Related Articles

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On-page SEO for Beginners

Website SEO Optimization for alternative search engines

Source :
https://seobase.com/top-5-content-optimization-tools-for-seo/

How to Do Niche Keyword Research?

SEO Niche keywords research is your way to attract your audience. The niche keywords are the particular long-tail keywords related to a specific industry. You can find your best niche keywords list using the best online SEO niche search tool. Do you know how valuable for your SEO plan to tailor your pay-per-click campaigns to niche keywords list and not just general and trending terms? It is challenging for general or short tail keywords to rank on the first page on search engines such as Google, especially on a new site.

When starting to manage a new venture, it can be challenging to predict the impact of a new research campaign on your industry niche. As a result, searching niche keywords is the perfect solution to avoid any risks that may occur and affect your growth.

In this post, seobase presents how to research keywords for a niche using the niche research tools and how to find a niche keywords list. 

Use a seobase Keyword Research Tool to Find Niche Keywords

Choosing an adequate and effective niche search tool is just as important and valuable as determining and choosing your SEO niche. Let’s say you decided to create a site that provides SEO services like seobase. In this case, you may have already decided that your website targets the SEO niche.

It may not matter much how much you know about the SEO industry, whether with a high level of experience or a lack of knowledge. This means that understanding which keywords will be profitable for you early on can be quite a challenge.

Since your website is a rookie site, you don’t have much historical data to use as an indicator of future performance. The seobase Keyword Explorer Tool is the ideal and most effective niche search tool for the initial niche keywords research and creating a niche keywords list.

Take advantage of the seobase Keyword Explorer Tool features, learn how to find niche keywords, and try to create an extensive niche keywords list. It may include forms of SEO niche keywords that you may not be able to come up with on your own, but the tool does.

how to research keywords for a niche

Refine Your Niche Keyword List

You need to realize that the niche keywords list you take from niche research tools is just suggestions. So it’s critical to find a compelling way to refine your niche keyword research list. There are several ways to refine your SEO niche keywords list when adding a keyword or URL: 

  • Your keyword list should be as specific to your website’s SEO niche.
  • Choose the relevant niche keywords for your industry. 
  • Don’t include keywords to use on your content randomly.
  • It would help you find the lowest difficulty keywords on a rookie website. 

The niche keywords list is a vital SEO factor that you need to use carefully to not target the wrong audience. See How to Find Best SEO Keywords: The Complete Guide

niche keywords

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Determine How Competitive Your Keywords Are

As we mentioned in the previous step, you have to know how difficult it is for niche keywords to SEO. Analyze how competitive each keyword you have in the niche keywords list. 

Your key to ranking on search engines always starts with using the least difficult keywords.

Don’t choose the most difficult niche keywords because they have a high volume. If you think about it this way, it can be difficult if not impossible to arrange.

If you choose less difficult niche keywords, even if they are only at volume 10, the ten visits you will get per month and counting all the keywords you will use over the month, the total clicks and visits will ultimately be rewarding.

how to research keywords for a niche

Niche Keyword Research: Conclusion

Successful keyword targeting requires constant monitoring and modification, especially niche keyword research. It is essential to know that niche research tools return a keyword does not mean that you will be able to rank on search engines necessarily.

The traffic you send from search engines will not end up converting just because you used the niche keywords list. However, SEO checkpoints are well implemented to get optimum results. Moreover, you can use the SEO services of the seobase platform.

Source :
https://seobase.com/how-to-do-niche-keyword-research/

How to Promote Your Blog Without Social Media?

How to promote your blog without social media? The best way to boost your blog traffic is by using SEO (search engine optimization) techniques. This includes writing great content that people will want to read, creating high-quality images for your posts, and making sure your site loads quickly. However, you need to prompt your blog to attract more visitors and increase the traffic and clicks. Most webmasters ask themselves, how do I get people to read my blog? The answer is straightforward: you can follow the next few tips and get a boosted blog. In this post, seobase will explain how to promote your blog without social media, how to get your blog noticed, and how to get traffic to your website without social media.

Comment and Engage With Other Blogs.

There are compelling methods to get boosted blogs without using social media. Commenting and engaging with other blogs is key to getting your blog noticed. Some web admins create their website blogs and overlook that community is essential to achieve their goals from this post. 

One of the most effective ways to promote your blog without social media you can do is to visit and read other bloggers’ content, and to boost your blog’s traffic is to comment and engage with other blogs. In this step all you need to do in this step is to visit other blogs and comment. As a result, your fellow bloggers might also return the favor to your blog website. You can do this through commenting on other blogs, sharing links to them on social media, or even asking questions on forums.

how to get traffic to your website without social media

Write Authentic Blog Content.

To promote your blog posts without social media, you need to know some more creative ideas; one of them is unique content. Writing unique and authentic content will attract the readers. Catchy headlines and optimized blogging content will attract the most readers to your blog. Attracting more readers increases traffic, clicks, and converts to customers. Also, do not overlook including the right keywords. Learn how to set a successful SEO keyword strategy.

If you want to write authentic blog content, you need to think about what you would say to a friend who was writing a similar post. This will help you avoid sounding too much like everyone else. When you start writing, build the content structure so that readers can find answers to their queries and do not have to leave your site quickly or look for another blog that answers their queries and questions. To learn how to promote your blog without social media with unique content, check the new content ideas

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Share Your Blog Posts on Pinterest.

Suppose you don’t use the social media platforms or even if you don’t have social media yet to support your content promotion. Here’s a vital and valuable tip to follow regarding how to get traffic to your website without social media; you can share your posts on Pinterest to get boosted blog. 

Just make sure you use the right hashtags and keywords so people can find your content easily. On Pinterest, users engage in niche topics; this will help you to get your blog noticed to increase your website position and rank #1 on Google SERPs. No worries, there are plenty of places to promote your blog without social media. 

get your blog noticed

Write Guest Posts.

If you write guest posts to get boosted blog, you will not only gain exposure for your own website, but you will also help others by sharing their work. This is one of the easiest ways to generate new business leads and get people to read my blog. As a result, you will get traffic to your website without social media. 

If you’re following the guest post way to get your blog noticed and promote your blog without social media, you may face only one problem; getting people from your guest post to your website is a bit challenging. According to Backlinko, one industry study found that the average guest post brings in only 50 visitors. To solve this problem, you need to use the Guest Post Bonuses. With a Guest Post Bonus, you give the readers and webmasters motivation to make them visit your website. Read Why Everyone Ignores Your Guest Post Outreach Email.

Start a Podcast.

A podcast is an audio show that usually records interviews with experts in various fields. You can record these yourself or use services such as Blubrry.com. Once your episodes are ready, you need to find a platform to host them. Several options are available, including iTunesSoundCloudStitcherGoogle Play Music, and more.

The podcast may be one of the best places to promote your blog. The podcast bonus strategy is similar to the Guest Post Bonus strategy discussed above. Instead of creating a reward for each guest post, you can create a set of bonuses for each podcast you go to as a guest. 

Furthermore, you can inform about these rewards through email campaigns. But how does this strategy start? Follow these steps to implement a successful podcast strategy:

  • First, create content that your podcast listeners will care about.
  • Then, assign podcast rewards to what you’ll talk about in the podcast.
  • After that, play it by the podcast host.
  • Finally, host your rewards section landing page at a URL that’s easy to remember and write.

boosted blog

How to Promote Your Blog Without Social Media: Conclusion.

Blogging without social media is not very popular, and not many bloggers follow it. However, it is a very successful strategy by which you can get a boosted blog. There are a lot of places to promote your blog that no one has visited yet. The competition in blogging social media marketing is tough and fierce. Despite its outstanding results, it takes a lot of time and effort to get a high ranking on Google.

So, at some point, you have to find alternative ways and know how to get traffic to your website without social media and how to promote an article or blog without social media. seobase always offers solutions to make it easier to rank on Google for websites. However, always remember to make your blog SEO optimized. You can use the best online SEO tools from seobase to constantly improve your blogs, measure your SEO strategy‘s success and effectiveness, and make your blog posts Google Algerismths friendly.

Source :
https://seobase.com/how-to-promote-your-blog-without-social-media/

SEO Checkpoints Best Practices Guide 2022

The SEO checkpoints best practices are crucial for your website’s ranking on SERPs. Implementing this blog post SEO checklist wouldn’t take so much time; however, it would lead you to achieve your SEO goals. 15 min SEO daily to make sure you are on the right track is your best option to get a higher rank. First, let’s refresh our memory with the SEO meaning, then we can discuss the best practices of the SEO checkpoints in detail.  

SEO is an acronym for (Search engine optimization), a set of activities we do to create good content and design the website. It also includes defining the business strategy and how to produce content to gain a better position in Google search results and attract more visitors to the site.

The term SEO may broaden to include another definition: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is optimizing your online content so that a search engine likes to display it as a higher result for searches around a particular keyword. In this post, seobase will explain SEO checklist best practices in simplified detail to the most critical SEO checkpoints, daily SEO tracking, monthly SEO tasks and show you some ideal ways to achieve advanced results in search engines. 

How to Use This SEO Checklist?

We have divided the SEO checkpoints best practices into main points to facilitate their explanation. Therefore, we will separately focus on each SEO component in the following few lines. Here are the leading SEO components checkpoints:

  • Basic SEO Checklist
  • Technical SEO Checklist
  • Keyword Research Checklist
  • Content Checklist
  • On-page SEO Checklist
  • Link Building Checklist

To set a successful SEO strategy, you should focus on the above SEO checkpoints best practices and carefully apply them to your website. This SEO checklist best practices work for e-commerce stores, local businesses, and affiliate sites.

seo components
  • Basic SEO Checkpoints Best Practices

Set up Google Search Console. 

Google offers free Google Search Console services to track your site’s organic search performance. The importance of this tool is that it shows you the effectiveness of the detailed SEO plan, and it is a reliable service since the Google search engine provides it.

You can find on GSC:

  • The keywords you rank for,
  • Your ranking positions,
  • Your website errors.

In addition, you can submit your sitemaps successfully to get the best and most accurate results. 

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Set up Bing Webmaster Tools. 

This step is similar to what is applied to Google, but this time to Bing. Setting up the Bing Webmaster Tools is essential for implementing a successful SEO plan.

Set up seobase online SEO Tools.

You can use seobase best online SEO tool to get the best results on search engines and improve your rankings. seobase provides webmasters with the most powerful SEO tools to facilitate the implantation of their SEO strategy and make it easier to achieve their SEO goals in the long term. Here are a few key SEO tools from seobase:

Set up Google Analytics.

Also, Google offers an additional free service, Google Analytics, which is essential because it shows how many people visit your site, how they found it, and how they interact with it. 

You can link Google Search Console with Google Analytics to see Search Console data in Analytics.

Install an SEO plugin.

You can skip this step if you’re using a different website platform like Shopify. This step is for WordPress users. If you are using WordPress, you should install an additional SEO plugin. These plugins help you organize your sitemaps and place the proper meta tags. Despite the importance of these tools, you do not need more than one tool only.

Here are some tools you can choose from to install in WordPress: 

Create and submit a sitemap.

We’ve already mentioned that the GSC tool enables you to set your sitemaps to get accurate data. In addition, it is essential to fine-tune your Sitemaps because they are the link between search engines and the main content on your site. Sitemaps tell search engines where to find content on your website so that their spiders can easily crawl and index your pages. You can use the seobase Site Profiler tool to get a certain answer confirming that your website can be crawled and indexed.

Usually, you can find your sitemap at one of these URLs:

  • /sitemap.xml
  • /sitemap_index.xml
  • /sitemap

For more information about the crawl and index process, read How Google Search organizes information.

Create a robots.txt file.

Creating a robots.txt file is an essential step on your SEO checklist; if checks, you can improve your SEO performance. But what is a robots.txt file? Robots.txt is a text file; its job is to direct search engines to where they can crawl and where they are not allowed to. 

A robots.txt file may be necessary if you do not want search engines to crawl a specific section of your website that does not have the required SEO factors, to not affect the SEO checklist of your website.

You can check your robots.txt file; all you have to do is write your domain name and robots.txt like this; yourdomain.com/robots.txt. 

If you see a text file, you already have a robots.txt file. If not, search Google for “robots.txt generator” to create one, or you can ask for help from a professional SEO company.

Now, after performing all of the above steps, you just got the basic SEO checklist best practices done. Let’s move to the next level of your SEO strategy, the technical SEO checklist. 

  • Technical SEO Checkpoints Best Practices

Implementing technical SEO checkpoints best practices helps you create reliable bases and ensure your site can be crawled and indexed. As a result, your website will rank higher than any other website in your industry on SERPs. 

Here are the primary and most common technical SEO checkpoints best practices to follow.

Make sure your site is crawlable and indexable.

Google does not index any page or content its spiders have not crawled. So it is crucial to check that Google spiders have accessed your content constantly. You can do this through Google Search Console to search for any warnings or exceptions related to robots.txt files.

Many webmasters confuse indexing and crawling, although they are two completely different processes. The crawled pages do not have to be indexed by Google. If you found a ‘noindex’ meta tag for bots or an x-robots tag on the page, indexing will not be possible. You can conduct a live test on GSC to find your indexing issues. If during live testing, indexing issues were detected with the URL, then you can request indexing from Google. Also, Google will inform you about noindexed URLs in the Coverage report.

The good news is that you also can get this information using the seobase Site Profiler tool. The tool will give you a detailed report for your site audit, including this information. 

Make sure you’re using HTTPs.

It is important to use HTTPS as it is an exemplary security standard and will protect the data of your visitors. This is even more important if you require passwords or payment information, then using HTTPS is a must.

If you don’t use HTTPS, it’s time to migrate now. First, ensure your site sits on HTTPS by checking your browser’s URL bar. If you see a “padlock” sign on the left side of the URL, then you’re using HTTPS. If you don’t see this sign, you are not.

Http urls for seo

Check for duplicate versions of your site in Google’s Index.

You may face a severe SEO issue if you allow Google to index more than one version of your website. 

For example, you see that these links listed below are all the same and will not make a big difference or cause a glitch, but it is entirely different from the point of view of search engines:

  • https://www.domain.com
  • https://domain.com
  • http://www.domain.com
  • https://domain.com

Don’t let Google get distracted by all those links, and make sure only one format is indexed. It can lead to crawling, indexing, and security issues.

All other versions should redirect 301 to your main domain, and you can check for duplicate versions of your site in Google’s index by entering each variant into your browser bar. If you’ve set up redirects without issue, you’re good. But if you still find that you can access many versions, you must redirect immediately.

Check your site speed.

Since 2010, PageSpeed has been an important ranking factor on search engines for desktop. Since 2018, it has been included as a vital ranking factor on search engines for mobile.

If you think of it from the user’s point of view, it is tedious and frustrating if you go to a site to search for the information you need and it takes you a lot of time to load; Google also adopts this point of view. Therefore, if you slow site speed, Google does not consider this site worthy of ranking on the first page because it does not improve the user experience.

You can use tools like PageSpeed Insights. Also, you can use the seobase Site Profiler tool to give you deep insights about your PageSpeed and a whole site audit report to see how fast your web page loads. 

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.

There is no doubt that we are in a speedy era; many searches are done through mobile. So having a mobile-friendly website is more important than ever; it is no longer optional.

Check your site’s mobile-friendliness by using Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool. seobase Site Profiler tool gives you an excellent chance to check if your website is mobile-friendly.  

Install an image compression plugin.

One of the most underrated factors on the SEO checklist is images. Compressing images and reducing the size of image files improves page speed. As a result, it will enhance your chances of ranking high on search engines.

For WordPress users, there are plenty of plugins available for that. For example, you can use one of the best free WordPress SEO tools, ShortPixel. It allows you to compress up to 100 images/month for free. 

Furthermore,  you can use Tinypng to compress images in general and use them on other platforms.

Fix broken pages (Broken Internal and Outbound Links.)

Broken links do not provide the best user experience and break the transfer of the domain authority DA to your site. The best way to find broken links on your website is to conduct a backlink audit or audit your site thoroughly. You can use Site Profiler and Backlink Checker tools from seobase to get the best results.

Fix duplicate content issues.

If you’re targeting e-commerce SEO, probably you’ll find duplicated content issues; it is very common in e-commerce SEO because of the faceted navigation. Make sure you don’t have any duplicate content on your website. 

You can fix this SEO issue by canonicalizing the affected URLs where necessary.

  • Keyword Research SEO Checkpoints Best Practices

 This part of the seobase SEO checklist guide is primarily directed at SEO content writers. Applying the following SEO checkpoints to your content will boost your search engine rankings. Choosing the right keyword is your key to reaching the audience, but all your efforts will be in vain if your content is not SEO-equipped. Follow the next few tips to get your website at the top of the first search engine results pages (SERPs). 

Explore your primary keyword.

The right keywords allow you to reach your goal easily. However, using improper or consistent SEO keywords with your content may be reason enough to distract search engines. In addition, the main keyword will refer to different subjects; thus, the search engine will see that your site is not trustworthy enough to appear on the first page because it does not provide a good user experience.

How do you know the best keyword to focus on?

Do frequent keyword research to target the main keywords you can rank by on the SERPs, but you should also ensure that you target the best keyword each time you post new content. Also, you can find the right keywords using the seobase keyword explorer tool.

Assess search intent. 

If your page doesn’t align with the search intent, your chances of ranking are tiny to none.

So how do you assess search intent?

After finding the primary keyword, look at the ranked pages on Google SERPs for your primary keyword.

Check the URLs and titles of the top-ranking results, for example, if a user searches for “SEO checkpoints best practices.” Given the researcher’s intention, it is clear that he wants to know the primary points that must be applied to obtain the best SEO results. If the user searches for “SEO,” it is likely that he wants to get an SEO service provider.

Assess your chances of ranking on Google to enhance your SEO checkpoints best practices.

Investigating the difficulty of the keywords you use helps you prioritize your chances of ranking on search engines. Use the seobse keyword explorer tool to find out the SEO difficulty of keywords. If you are a beginner, you can use low or medium-difficulty keywords to be able to compete.

Also, check the results for the things that may suggest a hard keyword to crack, like high-quality backlinks and high topical relevance of the top-ranking sites, etc.

Research what people want to know.

Suppose a user searches for an “SEO Checklist.” You can see from analyzing search intent that people are looking for specific practical steps to implement. However, you should ask yourself a couple of vital questions; 

What other questions do they have? 

What other information fits your content to include?

You can find the answer to your questions in Google’s “People Also Ask” box. 

Also, you can use a content ideas generator to find new subjects to write about. Finally, using the keywords explorer tool gives you a good insight into your query.

Source :
https://seobase.com/seo-checkpoints-best-practices-guide-2022/

KB5004442—Manage changes for Windows DCOM Server Security Feature Bypass (CVE-2021-26414)

Summary

The Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) Remote Protocol is a protocol for exposing application objects using remote procedure calls (RPCs). DCOM is used for communication between the software components of networked devices.  

Hardening changes in DCOM were required for CVE-2021-26414. Therefore, we recommended that you verify if client or server applications in your environment that use DCOM or RPC work as expected with the hardening changes enabled.

To address the vulnerability described in CVE-2021-26414, you must install updates released September 14, 2021 or later and enable the registry key described below in your environment. We recommended that you complete testing in your environment and enable these hardening changes as soon as possible. If you find issues during testing, you must contact the vendor for the affected client or server software for an update or workaround before early 2022.

Note We recommend that you update your devices to the latest security update available to take advantage of the advanced protections from the latest security threats.

Timeline

Update releaseBehavior change
June 8, 2021Hardening changes disabled by default but with the ability to enable them using a registry key.
June 14, 2022Hardening changes enabled by default but with the ability to disable them using a registry key.
March 14, 2023Hardening changes enabled by default with no ability to disable them. By this point, you must resolve any compatibility issues with the hardening changes and applications in your environment.

Registry setting to enable or disable the hardening changes

During the timeline phases in which you can enable or disable the hardening changes for CVE-2021-26414, you can use the following registry key:

  • Path : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Ole\AppCompat
  • Value Name: “RequireIntegrityActivationAuthenticationLevel”
  • Type: dword
  • Value Data: default = 0x00000000 means disabled. 0x00000001 means enabled. If this value is not defined, it will default to enabled.

Note You must enter Value Data in hexadecimal format. 

Important You must restart your device after setting this registry key for it to take effect.

Note Enabling the registry key above will make DCOM servers enforce an Authentication-Level of RPC_C_AUTHN_LEVEL_PKT_INTEGRITY or higher for activation.

Note This registry value does not exist by default; you must create it. Windows will read it if it exists and will not overwrite it.

New DCOM error events

To help you identify the applications that might have compatibility issues after we enable DCOM security hardening changes, we added new DCOM error events in the System log; see the tables below. The system will log these events if it detects that a DCOM client application is trying to activate a DCOM server using an authentication level that is less than RPC_C_AUTHN_LEVEL_PKT_INTEGRITY. You can trace to the client device from the server-side event log and use client-side event logs to find the application.

Server events

Event IDMessage
10036“The server-side authentication level policy does not allow the user %1\%2 SID (%3) from address %4 to activate DCOM server. Please raise the activation authentication level at least to RPC_C_AUTHN_LEVEL_PKT_INTEGRITY in client application.”(%1 – domain, %2 – user name, %3 – User SID, %4 – Client IP Address)

Client events

Event IDMessage
10037“Application %1 with PID %2 is requesting to activate CLSID %3 on computer %4 with explicitly set authentication level at %5. The lowest activation authentication level required by DCOM is 5(RPC_C_AUTHN_LEVEL_PKT_INTEGRITY). To raise the activation authentication level, please contact the application vendor.”
10038“Application %1 with PID %2 is requesting to activate CLSID %3 on computer %4 with default activation authentication level at %5. The lowest activation authentication level required by DCOM is 5(RPC_C_AUTHN_LEVEL_PKT_INTEGRITY). To raise the activation authentication level, please contact the application vendor.”(%1 – Application Path, %2 – Application PID, %3 – CLSID of the COM class the application is requesting to activate, %4 – Computer Name, %5 – Value of Authentication Level)

Availability

These error events are only available for a subset of Windows versions; see the table below.

Windows versionAvailable on or after these dates
Windows Server 2022September 27, 2021KB5005619
Windows 10, version 2004, Windows 10, version 20H2, Windows 10, version 21H1September 1, 2021KB5005101
Windows 10, version 1909August 26, 2021KB5005103
Windows Server 2019, Windows 10, version  1809August 26, 2021KB5005102
Windows Server 2016, Windows 10, version 1607September 14, 2021KB5005573
Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1October 12, 2021KB5006714

Source :
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5004442-manage-changes-for-windows-dcom-server-security-feature-bypass-cve-2021-26414-f1400b52-c141-43d2-941e-37ed901c769c

PSA: Nearly 5 Million Attacks Blocked Targeting 0-Day in BackupBuddy Plugin

Late evening, on September 6, 2022, the Wordfence Threat Intelligence team was alerted to the presence of a vulnerability being actively exploited in BackupBuddy, a WordPress plugin we estimate has around 140,000 active installations. This vulnerability makes it possible for unauthenticated users to download arbitrary files from the affected site which can include sensitive information.

After reviewing historical data, we determined that attackers started targeting this vulnerability on August 26, 2022, and that we have blocked 4,948,926 attacks targeting this vulnerability since that time.

The vulnerability affects versions 8.5.8.0 to 8.7.4.1, and has been fully patched as of September 2, 2022 in version 8.7.5. Due to the fact that this is an actively exploited vulnerability, we strongly encourage you to ensure your site has been updated to the latest patched version 8.7.5 which iThemes has made available to all site owners running a vulnerable version regardless of licensing status.

All Wordfence customers, including Wordfence PremiumWordfence CareWordfence Response, and Wordfence Free users, have been, and will continue to be, protected against any attackers trying to exploit this vulnerability due to the Wordfence firewall’s built-in directory traversal and file inclusion firewall rules. Wordfence PremiumCare, & Response, customers receive enhanced protection as attackers heavily targeting the vulnerability are blocked by the IP Blocklist.

Vulnerability Details

Description: Arbitrary File Download/Read
Affected Plugin: BackupBuddy
Plugin Slug: backupbuddy
Plugin Developer: iThemes
Affected Versions: 8.5.8.0 – 8.7.4.1
CVE ID: CVE-2022-31474
CVSS Score: 7.5 (High)
CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Fully Patched Version: 8.7.5

The BackupBuddy plugin for WordPress is designed to make back-up management easy for WordPress site owners. One of the features in the plugin is to store back-up files in multiple different locations, known as Destinations, which includes Google Drive, OneDrive, and AWS just to name a few. There is also the ability to store back-up downloads locally via the ‘Local Directory Copy’ option. Unfortunately, the method to download these locally stored files was insecurely implemented making it possible for unauthenticated users to download any file stored on the server.

More specifically the plugin registers an admin_init hook for the function intended to download local back-up files and the function itself did not have any capability checks nor any nonce validation. This means that the function could be triggered via any administrative page, including those that can be called without authentication (admin-post.php), making it possible for unauthenticated users to call the function. The back-up path is not validated and therefore an arbitrary file could be supplied and subsequently downloaded.

Due to this vulnerability being actively exploited, and its ease of exploitation, we are sharing minimal details about this vulnerability.

Indicators of Compromise

The Wordfence firewall has blocked over 4.9 million exploit attempts targeting this vulnerability since August 26, 2022, which is the first indication we have that this vulnerability was being exploited. We are seeing attackers attempting to retrieve sensitive files such as the /wp-config.php and /etc/passwd file which can be used to further compromise a victim.

The top 10 Attacking IP Addresses are as follows:

  • 195.178.120.89 with 1,960,065 attacks blocked
  • 51.142.90.255 with 482,604 attacks blocked
  • 51.142.185.212 with 366770 attacks blocked
  • 52.229.102.181 with 344604 attacks blocked
  • 20.10.168.93 with 341,309 attacks blocked
  • 20.91.192.253 with 320,187 attacks blocked
  • 23.100.57.101 with 303,844 attacks blocked
  • 20.38.8.68 with 302,136 attacks blocked
  • 20.229.10.195 with 277,545 attacks blocked
  • 20.108.248.76 with 211,924 attacks blocked

A majority of the attacks we have observed are attempting to read the following files:

  • /etc/passwd
  • /wp-config.php
  • .my.cnf
  • .accesshash

We recommend checking for the ‘local-download’ and/or the ‘local-destination-id’ parameter value when reviewing requests in your access logs. Presence of these parameters along with a full path to a file or the presence of ../../ to a file indicates the site may have been targeted for exploitation by this vulnerability. If the site is compromised, this can suggest that the BackupBuddy plugin was likely the source of compromise.

Conclusion

In today’s post, we detailed a zero-day vulnerability being actively exploited in the BackupBuddy plugin that makes it possible for unauthenticated attackers to steal sensitive files from an affected site and use the information obtained in those files to further infect a victim. This vulnerability was patched yesterday and we strongly recommend updating to the latest version of the plugin, currently version 8.7.5, right now since this is an actively exploited vulnerability.

All Wordfence customers, including Wordfence PremiumWordfence CareWordfence Response, and Wordfence Free users, have been, and will continue to be, protected against any attackers trying to exploit this vulnerability due to the Wordfence firewall’s built-in directory traversal and file inclusion firewall rules.

If you believe your site has been compromised as a result of this vulnerability or any other vulnerability, we offer Incident Response services via Wordfence Care. If you need your site cleaned immediately, Wordfence Response offers the same service with 24/7/365 availability and a 1-hour response time. Both these products include hands-on support in case you need further assistance.

If you know a friend or colleague who is using this plugin on their site, we highly recommend forwarding this advisory to them to help keep their sites protected, as this is a serious vulnerability that is actively being exploited in the wild.

We will continue to monitor the situation and follow up as more information becomes available.

Source :
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2022/09/psa-nearly-5-million-attacks-blocked-targeting-0-day-in-backupbuddy-plugin/

#StopRansomware: Vice Society

Summary

Actions to take today to mitigate cyber threats from ransomware:

• Prioritize and remediate known exploited vulnerabilities.
• Train users to recognize and report phishing attempts.
• Enable and enforce multifactor authentication.

Note: This joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) is part of an ongoing #StopRansomware effort to publish advisories for network defenders that detail various ransomware variants and ransomware threat actors. These #StopRansomware advisories include recently and historically observed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and indicators of compromise (IOCs) to help organizations protect against ransomware. Visit stopransomware.gov to see all #StopRansomware advisories and to learn more about other ransomware threats and no-cost resources.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) are releasing this joint CSA to disseminate IOCs and TTPs associated with Vice Society actors identified through FBI investigations as recently as September 2022. The FBI, CISA, and the MS-ISAC have recently observed Vice Society actors disproportionately targeting the education sector with ransomware attacks.

Over the past several years, the education sector, especially kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) institutions, have been a frequent target of ransomware attacks. Impacts from these attacks have ranged from restricted access to networks and data, delayed exams, canceled school days, and unauthorized access to and theft of personal information regarding students and staff. The FBI, CISA, and the MS-ISAC anticipate attacks may increase as the 2022/2023 school year begins and criminal ransomware groups perceive opportunities for successful attacks. School districts with limited cybersecurity capabilities and constrained resources are often the most vulnerable; however, the opportunistic targeting often seen with cyber criminals can still put school districts with robust cybersecurity programs at risk. K-12 institutions may be seen as particularly lucrative targets due to the amount of sensitive student data accessible through school systems or their managed service providers.

The FBI, CISA, and the MS-ISAC encourage organizations to implement the recommendations in the Mitigations section of this CSA to reduce the likelihood and impact of ransomware incidents.

Download the PDF version of this report: pdf, 521 KB

Technical Details

Note: This advisory uses the MITRE ATT&CK® for Enterprise framework, version 11. See MITRE ATT&CK for Enterprise for all referenced tactics and techniques.

Vice Society is an intrusion, exfiltration, and extortion hacking group that first appeared in summer 2021. Vice Society actors do not use a ransomware variant of unique origin. Instead, the actors have deployed versions of Hello Kitty/Five Hands and Zeppelin ransomware, but may deploy other variants in the future.

Vice Society actors likely obtain initial network access through compromised credentials by exploiting internet-facing applications [T1190]. Prior to deploying ransomware, the actors spend time exploring the network, identifying opportunities to increase accesses, and exfiltrating data [TA0010] for double extortion–a tactic whereby actors threaten to publicly release sensitive data unless a victim pays a ransom. Vice Society actors have been observed using a variety of tools, including SystemBC, PowerShell Empire, and Cobalt Strike to move laterally. They have also used “living off the land” techniques targeting the legitimate Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service [T1047] and tainting shared content [T1080].

Vice Society actors have been observed exploiting the PrintNightmare vulnerability (CVE-2021-1675 and CVE-2021-34527 ) to escalate privileges [T1068]. To maintain persistence, the criminal actors have been observed leveraging scheduled tasks [T1053], creating undocumented autostart Registry keys [T1547.001], and pointing legitimate services to their custom malicious dynamic link libraries (DLLs) through a tactic known as DLL side-loading [T1574.002]. Vice Society actors attempt to evade detection through masquerading their malware and tools as legitimate files [T1036], using process injection [T1055], and likely use evasion techniques to defeat automated dynamic analysis [T1497]. Vice Society actors have been observed escalating privileges, then gaining access to domain administrator accounts, and running scripts to change the passwords of victims’ network accounts to prevent the victim from remediating. 

Indicators of Compromise (IOCs)

Email Addresses
v-society.official@onionmail[.]org
ViceSociety@onionmail[.]org
OnionMail email accounts in the format of [First Name][Last Name]@onionmail[.]org
TOR Address
http://vsociethok6sbprvevl4dlwbqrzyhxcxaqpvcqt5belwvsuxaxsutyad[.]onion
IP Addresses for C2Confidence Level
5.255.99[.]59High Confidence
5.161.136[.]176Medium Confidence
198.252.98[.]184Medium Confidence
194.34.246[.]90Low Confidence

See Table 1 for file hashes obtained from FBI incident response investigations in September 2022.

Table 1: File Hashes as of September 2022

MD5SHA1
fb91e471cfa246beb9618e1689f1ae1da0ee0761602470e24bcea5f403e8d1e8bfa29832
 3122ea585623531df2e860e7d0df0f25cce39b21
 41dc0ba220f30c70aea019de214eccd650bc6f37
 c9c2b6a5b930392b98f132f5395d54947391cb79

MITRE ATT&CK TECHNIQUES

Vice Society actors have used ATT&CK techniques, similar to Zeppelin techniques, listed in Table 2.

Table 2: Vice Society Actors ATT&CK Techniques for Enterprise

Initial Access
Technique TitleIDUse
Exploit Public-Facing ApplicationT1190Vice Society actors exploit vulnerabilities in an internet-facing systems to gain access to victims’ networks.
Valid AccountsT1078Vice Society actors obtain initial network access through compromised valid accounts.
Execution
Technique TitleIDUse
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)T1047Vice Society actors leverage WMI as a means of “living off the land” to execute malicious commands. WMI is a native Windows administration feature.
Scheduled Task/JobT1053Vice Society have used malicious files that create component task schedule objects, which are often mean to register a specific task to autostart on system boot. This facilitates recurring execution of their code.
Persistence
Technique TitleIDUse
Modify System ProcessT1543.003Vice Society actors encrypt Windows Operating functions to preserve compromised system functions.
Registry Run Keys/Startup FolderT1547.001Vice Society actors have employed malicious files that create an undocumented autostart Registry key to maintain persistence after boot/reboot.
DLL Side-LoadingT1574.002Vice Society actors may directly side-load their payloads by planting their own DLL then invoking a legitimate application that executes the payload within that DLL. This serves as both a persistence mechanism and a means to masquerade actions under legitimate programs.
Privilege Escalation
Technique TitleIDUse
Exploitation for Privilege EscalationT1068Vice Society actors have been observed exploiting PrintNightmare vulnerability (CVE-2021-1675 and CVE-2021-34527) to escalate privileges.
Defense Evasion
Technique TitleIDUse
MasqueradingT1036Vice Society actors may attempt to manipulate features of the files they drop in a victim’s environment to mask the files or make the files appear legitimate.
Process InjectionT1055Vice Society artifacts have been analyzed to reveal the ability to inject code into legitimate processes for evading process-based defenses. This tactic has other potential impacts, including the ability to escalate privileges or gain additional accesses.
Sandbox EvasionT1497Vice Society actors may have included sleep techniques in their files to hinder common reverse engineering or dynamic analysis.
Lateral Movement
Technique TitleIDUse
Taint Shared ContentT1080Vice Society actors may deliver payloads to remote systems by adding content to shared storage locations such as network drives.
Exfiltration
Technique TitleIDUse
ExfiltrationTA0010Vice Society actors are known for double extortion, which is a second attempt to force a victim to pay by threatening to expose sensitive information if the victim does not pay a ransom.
Impact
Technique TitleIDUse
Data Encrypted for ImpactT1486Vice Society actors have encrypted data on target systems or on large numbers of systems in a network to interrupt availability to system and network resources.
Account Access RemovalT1531Vice Society actors run a script to change passwords of victims’ email accounts.

Mitigations

The FBI and CISA recommend organizations, particularly the education sector, establish and maintain strong liaison relationships with the FBI Field Office in their region and their regional CISA Cybersecurity Advisor. The location and contact information for FBI Field Offices and CISA Regional Offices can be located at www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices and www.cisa.gov/cisa-regions, respectively. Through these partnerships, the FBI and CISA can assist with identifying vulnerabilities to academia and mitigating potential threat activity. The FBI and CISA further recommend that academic entities review and, if needed, update incident response and communication plans that list actions an organization will take if impacted by a cyber incident.

The FBI, CISA, and the MS-ISAC recommend network defenders apply the following mitigations to limit potential adversarial use of common system and network discovery techniques and to reduce the risk of compromise by Vice Society actors:

Preparing for Cyber Incidents

  • Maintain offline backups of data, and regularly maintain backup and restoration.  By instituting this practice, the organization ensures they will not be severely interrupted, and/or only have irretrievable data.
  • Ensure all backup data is encrypted, immutable (i.e., cannot be altered or deleted), and covers the entire organization’s data infrastructure. Ensure your backup data is not already infected.
  • Review the security posture of third-party vendors and those interconnected with your organization. Ensure all connections between third-party vendors and outside software or hardware are monitored and reviewed for suspicious activity.
  • Implement listing policies for applications and remote access that only allow systems to execute known and permitted programs under an established security policy.
  • Document and monitor external remote connections. Organizations should document approved solutions for remote management and maintenance, and immediately investigate if an unapproved solution is installed on a workstation.
  • Implement a recovery plan to maintain and retain multiple copies of sensitive or proprietary data and servers in a physically separate, segmented, and secure location (i.e., hard drive, storage device, the cloud).

Identity and Access Management

  • Require all accounts with password logins (e.g., service account, admin accounts, and domain admin accounts) to comply with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards for developing and managing password policies.
    • Use longer passwords consisting of at least 8 characters and no more than 64 characters in length;
    • Store passwords in hashed format using industry-recognized password managers;
    • Add password user “salts” to shared login credentials;
    • Avoid reusing passwords;
    • Implement multiple failed login attempt account lockouts;
    • Disable password “hints”;
    • Refrain from requiring password changes more frequently than once per year unless a password is known or suspected to be compromised.
      Note: NIST guidance suggests favoring longer passwords instead of requiring regular and frequent password resets. Frequent password resets are more likely to result in users developing password “patterns” cyber criminals can easily decipher.
    • Require administrator credentials to install software.
  • Require phishing-resistant multifactor authentication for all services to the extent possible, particularly for webmail, virtual private networks, and accounts that access critical systems.
  • Review domain controllers, servers, workstations, and active directories for new and/or unrecognized accounts.
  • Audit user accounts with administrative privileges and configure access controls according to the principle of least privilege. 
  • Implement time-based access for accounts set at the admin level and higher. For example, the Just-in-Time (JIT) access method provisions privileged access when needed and can support enforcement of the principle of least privilege (as well as the Zero Trust model). This is a process where a network-wide policy is set in place to automatically disable admin accounts at the Active Directory level when the account is not in direct need. Individual users may submit their requests through an automated process that grants them access to a specified system for a set timeframe when they need to support the completion of a certain task.

Protective Controls and Architecture

  • Segment networks to prevent the spread of ransomware. Network segmentation can help prevent the spread of ransomware by controlling traffic flows between—and access to—various subnetworks and by restricting adversary lateral movement.
  • Identify, detect, and investigate abnormal activity and potential traversal of the indicated ransomware with a networking monitoring tool. To aid in detecting the ransomware, implement a tool that logs and reports all network traffic, including lateral movement activity on a network. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools are particularly useful for detecting lateral connections as they have insight into common and uncommon network connections for each host.
  • Install, regularly update, and enable real time detection for antivirus software on all hosts.
  • Secure and closely monitor remote desktop protocol (RDP) use.
    • Limit access to resources over internal networks, especially by restricting RDP and using virtual desktop infrastructure. If RDP is deemed operationally necessary, restrict the originating sources and require MFA to mitigate credential theft and reuse. If RDP must be available externally, use a VPN, virtual desktop infrastructure, or other means to authenticate and secure the connection before allowing RDP to connect to internal devices. Monitor remote access/RDP logs, enforce account lockouts after a specified number of attempts to block brute force campaigns, log RDP login attempts, and disable unused remote access/RDP ports.

Vulnerability and Configuration Management

  • Keep all operating systems, software, and firmware up to date. Timely patching is one of the most efficient and cost-effective steps an organization can take to minimize its exposure to cybersecurity threats. Organizations should prioritize patching of vulnerabilities on CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
  • Disable unused ports.
  • Consider adding an email banner to emails received from outside your organization.
  • Disable hyperlinks in received emails.
  • Disable command-line and scripting activities and permissions. Privilege escalation and lateral movement often depend on software utilities running from the command line. If threat actors are not able to run these tools, they will have difficulty escalating privileges and/or moving laterally.
  • Ensure devices are properly configured and that security features are enabled.
  • Disable ports and protocols that are not being used for a business purpose (e.g., RDP Transmission Control Protocol Port 3389).
  • Restrict Server Message Block (SMB) Protocol within the network to only access servers that are necessary, and remove or disable outdated versions of SMB (i.e., SMB version 1). Threat actors use SMB to propagate malware across organizations.

REFERENCES

REPORTING

The FBI is seeking any information that can be shared, to include boundary logs showing communication to and from foreign IP addresses, a sample ransom note, communications with Vice Society actors, Bitcoin wallet information, decryptor files, and/or a benign sample of an encrypted file.

The FBI, CISA, and the MS-ISAC strongly discourage paying ransom as payment does not guarantee victim files will be recovered. Furthermore, payment may also embolden adversaries to target additional organizations, encourage other criminal actors to engage in the distribution of ransomware, and/or fund illicit activities. Regardless of whether you or your organization have decided to pay the ransom, the FBI and CISA urge you to promptly report ransomware incidents to a local FBI Field Office, or to CISA at report@cisa.gov or (888) 282-0870. SLTT government entities can also report to the MS-ISAC (SOC@cisecurity.org or 866-787-4722).

DISCLAIMER

The information in this report is being provided “as is” for informational purposes only. The FBI, CISA, and the MS-ISAC do not endorse any commercial product or service, including any subjects of analysis. Any reference to specific commercial products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the FBI, CISA, or the MS-ISAC.

Revisions

September 6, 2022: Initial Version

Source :
https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-249a

How To Improve Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) on WordPress

Table of Contents

What is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and Why it Matters?

The Cumulative Layout Shift is a Core Web Vital metric and measures how visually stable the page is. The visual stability is calculated by how many unexpected layout shifts occur without interacting with the page. Every time the content shifts — not because you clicked on a link and so on — counts as a layout shift.

The sum of all these shifts determines the Cumulative Layout Shift score.

How many times have you been reading an article, and the content moved down because of some new ads? Or, have you ever tried to click on a button and ended up clicking on another link because a new big image suddenly pushed the content down?

All these examples are layout shifts — they’re caused by some elements on the page being unstable and changing their position on the page.
Elements change their position due to different reasons. For instance, a new image or an ad loading above-the-fold (at the top of the page) forces some content to go down and occupy another section of the page.

You can imagine how annoying this experience is for users.

That’s why Cumulative Layout Shift is one of the three Core Web Vitals metrics assessing a page’s user experience. Alongside Largest Contentful Paint and First Input Delay, CLS will roll out as part of the Page Experience ranking factor in June 2021.

The Cumulative Layout Shift accounts for 15% of the PageSpeed score and it’s a highly relevant metric for user experience and the new ranking factor. Therefore, it could also affect your SEO performance.

What’s a Good CLS Score

Cumulative Layout Shift

As we explained, the CLS is the sum of all the unexpected content shifts occurring on the page. According to the sum of all the shifts, your CLS grade could pass Google’s assessment or not.

good CLS score should be equal to or less than 0.1.

A CLS score between 0.1 and 0.25 means that the performance “needs improvements”.

The grade is “poor” if  CLS is more than 0.25.

How to Find and Measure the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

There are several ways to measure the CLS score, both from Lab and Data tools. Here are the most popular tools you can use:

You can better understand the difference between Lab and Field Data in our dedicated post on PageSpeed Insights.

Let’s see how PageSpeed Insights and Search Console can help you find and measure Cumulative Layout Shift.

Measuring and Finding CLS with PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is one the best tools to measure and find Cumulative Layout Shift.

The tool provides you with the CLS score from the Lab and Field data so that you can measure both controlled and user data.

PageSpeed Insights also shows you the potential elements causing a layout shift.

The example below shows a bad score for CLS, both for the Field and Lab Data:

PageSpeed score - Bad CLS grade

Jumping to the Diagnostics area, you can find what is causing the issue under the  “Avoid large layout shift” section.

In this case, there’s only one element affecting CLS. It’s a preformatted text included on the page to explain how to measure CLS in JavaScript:

Avoid large layout shifts - PageSpeed Insights

As you can see, PSI gives you the score related to each element so that you can understand how much every element contributes to the overall CLS score.

If you have more than one element listed in this section, you should start fixing the ones that contribute the most to the bad grade. It’s likely that by fixing the most relevant issues, you’ll get a score good enough to pass Google’s assessment.

Note: Let’s say that you get a bad Field grade and a good Lab one — yes, it could happen! In that case, you should make sure you get a good score for CLS in the Field Data, too. Keep in mind that Field Data is related to the real user experience.
As for CLS, Lab Data only considers layout shifts during page load. On the other hand, Field Data counts all the layout shifts during the whole visit, from entry until the page is closed. Therefore, it’s more representative of your site than the Lab Data. It’s no coincidence that Google uses field Data for search rankings.

Measuring and Finding LCP on Search Console

In addition to measuring the CLS score and finding the elements causing layout shifts, you should analyze the sitewide performance.

The Core Web Vitals report in Search Console is the best way to find all the URLs affected by the same issue. For instance, in the Mobile or Desktop report’s Details tab, you may read “CLS issue: more than 0.1 (mobile)”.

By clicking on the specific row, you’ll find a list of URLs that need to be fixed for the same reason.

Search Console Report - CLS issues

Once you solve the issue, it will be easy to validate the fix for all the pages affected by the same problem.

Let’s now understand what causes a bad CLS score and how you can solve it.

What Factors Affect CLS and Cause a Slow Score

The most common factors of a poor Cumulative Layout Shift grade on WordPress are:

  • Images and videos without dimensions
  • Ads, embeds, and iframes without dimensions
  • Web Fonts causing Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT) or Flash of invisible text (FOIT)
  • Actions waiting for a network response before updating DOM (especially for ads)
  • Dynamically injected content (e.g., animations).

Keep in mind that CLS has the most significant impact on mobile — the most critical and challenging device for optimizing performance. There are several reasons, from a smaller viewport to a challenging mobile network and a weaker Central Processing unit (CPU).

Images and Videos Without Dimensions

Images and videos without dimensions are a common cause for a layout shift.

If you don’t specify the width and height size attributes, the browser doesn’t know how much space has to allocate while loading these elements. Likely, the space reserved won’t be enough. As a result, once these elements are fully loaded, they will take more space than expected — the content already displayed will shift.

You can solve this issue by including image dimensions on images and video elements in different ways. We’ve got you covered in the dedicated section!

Ads, Embeds, and Iframes Without Dimensions

The same “dimension” issue goes for ads, embeds, and iframes. Once again, not reserving enough space makes these dynamic elements push down the content already displayed. Therefore, new layout shifts will occur on the page.

You’ll manage this problem by assigning fixed dimensions to the ads and managing the size reserved for such elements through specific tactics.

Web Fonts Causing Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT) or Flash of Invisible Text (FOIT)

Web fonts can cause layout shifts, plus a pretty unpleasant user experience while rendering the page. It’s about how slow the fonts load. You might face two different issues: Flash of Unstyled Text (FOUT) or Flash of invisible text (FOIT).

On the one hand, you could see the text on the page with a “not-so-good” style (FOUT). It’s because the custom font takes a bit to load. In the meantime, you’ll see the fallback font. Once the custom font is ready, it will replace the fallback one. You’ll then see the font changing on the page — and the content will inevitably shift.

On the other hand, you could wait a bit before seeing any text displayed. It’s because the custom font is still being loaded (FOIT). You’ll see the content on the page only after the custom fonts have been rendered. Once fully loaded, that content might cause a layout shift.

The main way to solve this issue is to preload fonts, as you’ll read in a minute.

Actions Waiting for a Network Response Before Updating DOM & Content Injected on the Page

Animations and dynamic content injected on the page — such as banners, ads, or Instagram feeds —  can also cause a layout shift. Once again, it’s because there’s not enough space reserved for such elements.

At this point, you know how essential it is to allocate space for the elements that engage users and shouldn’t ruin the user experience.

Let’s see how to fix these problems.

You can read our in-depth and detailed guide, or you can jump to the video that shows how to improve CLS with WP Rocket!

How to Fix a Cumulative Layout Shift More Than 0.25 s or 0.1 s on Mobile and Desktop

If you want to avoid large layout shifts on your WordPress site, here’s how you can reduce a bad CLS score (with and without plugins):

1. Include Width and Height Size Attributes on Images and Video Elements

2. Preload Fonts (And Optimize Them)

3. Manage Space and Size for Ad Slots

4. Manage Space for Embeds and Iframes

5. Manage Dynamic Content

6. Prefer the CSS Transform Property for Animations

By going over each point, you’ll understand how to fix the Search Console status: CLS issue: more than 0.25s or CLS issue: more than 0.1s, both from mobile and/or desktop.

🚀 For each of our recommendations, you’ll find a piece of information about its performance impact — from low to high. The higher the impact is, the higher chance that the Cumulative Layout Shift grade will improve after following that specific recommendation.

Some best practices to avoid large layout shifts don’t include a specific solution — they’re more about managing well space for ads and other crucial elements.

1. Include Width and Height Size Attributes on Images and Video Elements

Performance impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

One of the simplest ways to fix CLS is to include the width and height attributes on your images and video elements in your WordPress CMS:

Setting image dimensions fixes CLS

WordPress adds image dimensions by default. So, this action should be automatically solved.

In case you’re facing any issue, keep in mind that WP Rocket automatically includes any missing “width” and “height” values to images.

You only have to select the “Add missing image dimensions” option in the Media tab. Fast and straightforward as that!

You can easily add missing image dimensions.

Another way to solve this issue is to take advantage of the CSS aspect ratio boxes and let the browsers set the default ratio of images.

Simply put, you should include the width or the height attribute and set the aspect ratio using CSS. The browser will figure out the missing attribute and get the image dimensions before rendering the page. By doing so, it will allocate the space needed while the image is loading. As a result, the content won’t move around, and layout shifts will be avoided.

It’s helpful information to keep in mind because many plugins, such as YouTube video embed ones, use aspect-ratio on their output.

Don’t forget about responsive images! You can use the srcset attribute:

<img
width="1000"
height="1000"
src="puppy-1000.jpg"
srcset="puppy-1000.jpg 1000w, puppy-2000.jpg 2000w, puppy-3000.jpg 3000w"
alt="Puppy with balloons"
/>

SourceGoogle

Thanks to srcset, the browser can choose between a set of images and related sizes. Keep in mind that images should use the same aspect ratio to set image size.

By including size images, you’ll serve images with correct dimensions and address the PageSpeed Insights opportunity.

2. Preload Fonts (And Optimize Them)

Performance impact: low (high only if the site had large text) 🚀

As we explained, if web fonts don’t load fast, they cause a terrible user experience and affect the CLS grade.

As a best practice for avoiding layout shifts, you should preload fonts.

By preloading fonts, you’ll tell the browser to load the fonts as one of the top-priority resources. When rendering the page, the browser will load the fonts as fast as possible. As a result, the browser will likely include the fonts in the first meaningful paint — that’s when the page’s primary content is fully loaded and displayed. In that case, no layout shift will occur.

You can add  the rel=preload to the key web fonts:

<link rel="preload" href="font.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" crossorigin>

Did you know that you can easily preload fonts with WP Rocket? In the dedicated tab, you only have to include the URLs of the font files to be preloaded:

Preload tab - Preload fonts feature

Please note that it’s useful to enable this WP Rocket option only if you have not activated the Remove Unused CSS feature (File optimization tab). If RUCSS is activated, you don’t need to activate the Preload fonts option.

By preloading fonts, you’ll address the “Ensure text remains visible during Webfont load” PageSpeed Insight recommendation.

There’s more to this point. To prevent any FOIT and FOUT issues, you should combine the rel=preload (or the WP Rocket feature enabled) with the CSS line font-display: optional.

The CSS font-display descriptor determines how font files are downloaded and displayed by the browser.
With font-display: optional, the browser will download and cache the font files to make them immediately available for rendering. So, even though font-display has several values, optional is the one you should use.

Another useful tip to reduce the FOUT issue is to add the display:swap;missing on font-display properties. WP Rocket can help you do it if you minify/combine CSS files.

There are other ways to load fonts faster:

Convert the icon fonts to SVG. Font icons take a while to load and don’t help accessibility. There’s no reason to use them. Using SVGs, the font will render faster, and you will load the exact fonts you need.

Make multiple font formats available. By doing so, the browsers will pick the compatible format and only load its font. Here is some information about font formats that you may find helpful:

  1. Avoid TTF. It’s usually 10 – 20% more heavy than WOFF.
  2. Use SVG for Safari. It’s usually a bit smaller than WOFF.
  3. Use WOFF2 for modern browsers. It’s the smallest size – around 30% smaller than WOFF and SVG.
  4. Implement WOFF as a fallback when SVG or WOFF2 can’t be used.

Host your fonts locally or use a CDN to cache them. You’ll avoid any delay and deliver fonts faster.

Optimize your fonts to make them as small and fast as possible. As for Google Fonts, did you know that WP Rocket automatically takes care of them?

By applying these recommendations, you’ll optimize your fonts and avoid several layout shifts. You’ll address the PSI recommendation: “Ensure text remains visible during webfont load” on your WordPress site.

3. Manage Space and Size for Ad Slots

Performance impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

There are several best practices to avoid any layout shift for ads:

  • Assign fixed dimensions to the ads so that you’ll reserve enough space for the ads to be loaded.
  • Reserve the biggest possible space for ads. Historical data come in handy to assess what’s the best dimension for each ad slot.
  • Keep every space reserved for ads that have not been displayed. In other words, you shouldn’t collapse any area on the viewport. You could rather include a placeholder or a fallback element.
  • Place non-sticky ads in the middle of the page — anyway, far from the top of the viewport.

The Delay JavaScript Execution feature provided by WP Rocket can help you control dynamic content above the fold like Google Ads. The feature can be used to stop dynamic interaction, content injection (ads), and dynamic class changes until there is an interaction on the page.

Once again, you’ll address the “Serve images with correct dimensions” PSI recommendation. The same goes for the next section.

4. Manage Space for Embeds and Iframes

Performance impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

The recommendations for managing embeds and iframes are similar to the ones for ads.

In particular, you should precompute enough space for such elements. Once again, historical data can be useful to understand how much space you should reserve.

Placeholder or fallback is an excellent solution to manage the unknown embed size.

5. Manage Dynamic Content

Performance impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

Dynamic content such as banners can also affect Cumulative Layout Shift. That’s why you should avoid displaying new content unless it’s triggered by user interaction. As you know, CLS counts only the layout shifts that occurred when users are not interacting with the page.

As explained in the “Manage Space and Size for Ad Slots” section, you can take advantage of the Delay JavaScript Execution option provided by WP Rocket to control dynamic content above the fold.

By managing dynamic content, you’ll take care of the following PageSpeed recommendations:

  • Avoid large layout shifts
  • Avoids enormous network payloads.

6. Prefer the CSS Transform Property for Animations

Performance impact: low 🚀

The last best practice to ensure visual stability is to take care of animations. You can use the CSS property: transform, which doesn’t trigger any layout changes.

You’ll address the “Avoid non-composited animations” PageSpeed recommendation.

Source :
https://wp-rocket.me/google-core-web-vitals-wordpress/improve-cumulative-layout-shift/

How To Improve First Input Delay (FID) on WordPress

Table of Contents

What is First Input Delay (FID) and Why it Matters?

First Input Delay is a Core Web Vitals metric and measures how long it takes for the browser to respond to the first user’s interaction with a page — that is, clicking on a link, tapping on a button, or interacting with another element.

Let’s say that you land on a site and click on a link. Of course, you would expect the page to answer as soon as possible, right? Unfortunately, this is not always the case. For instance, you may click on a link, and nothing happens for a while — it’s because the browser is not able to process the user’s request immediately.

In more technical words, it’s because the browser’s main thread is processing another request and can’t respond to the user’s one. Quite often, the requests that keep the browser busy are related to processing JavaScript files. We’ll go over the JS files in the next section and explain how to fix the main issues.

So, back to you: you click on a link and keep waiting for something to happen on the page… Pretty annoying, isn’t it?

That’s why FID is part of the Core Web Vitals metrics and helps measure a page’s user experience.

Unlike the other two Core Web Vitals metrics, FID can only be measured on the field — after all, it’s all about users’ interaction.

For this reason, some tools, such as Lighthouse, can’t measure the First Input Delay and use Total Blocking Time as a proxy. TBT is a lab metric that also measures interactivity and responsiveness (without user interaction). As long as the TBT score is good, the FID grade should also be fine.

TBT accounts for 25% of the overall PageSpeed Insights score. It’s the highest weight, and only LCP has the same one. By improving TBT performance, you’ll likely improve your page speed grade and the FID performance.

What’s a good FID score

First Input Delay

As for the other Core Web Vitals, scores are divided into three buckets: Good, Needs improvement, and Poor.

A good FID score needs to have a First Input Delay of less or equal to 100 milliseconds.

The score “needs improvement” if it’s between 100 and 300 milliseconds.

On the other hand, a “poor” score is beyond 300 milliseconds.

What’s a Good Total Blocking Time Score

You may wonder if the same score buckets apply to the Total Blocking Time. TBT score is slightly different — as the metric itself is. The key difference is that TBT measures interactivity without user input. That’s why it can be calculated as lab Data.

Total Blocking time measures how long the page is “blocked” before responding to user input such as a keyboard press, screen tap, or mouse click — no user interaction, you see? The sum of all the “block times” determines the TBT score.

To be a bit more technical, TBT measures the sum of all periods between First Contentful Paint (when you can interact with the first content on the page) and Time to Interactive (how long it takes for the page to get fully interactive).

As usual, Total Blocking Time includes three buckets:

Good – less or equal to 300 milliseconds

Needs improvement – Between 300-600 milliseconds

Poor – over 600 milliseconds.

In short: both FID and TBT capture a page’s interactivity and responsiveness — even though FID takes into account the user interaction, whereas TBT relies on user input. For this reason, both metrics are similar in terms of improvements needed.

What’s The Maximum Potential First Input Delay

You may have come across the Maximum Potential First Input Delay and wondered what’s the relationship with FID.

The Maximum Potential First Input Delay measures the maximum delay between the user’s interaction and the browser’s response.

It’s the worst-case scenario based on the duration of the longest task after the First Contentful Paint — that’s when the first part of a content’s page is displayed on the screen, and you can start interacting with the page.

Once you can click on a link or tap a button (First Contentful Paint accomplished), you can measure how long it takes for the page to respond to your request while the longest task is running. The longest task’s length is the Maximum Potential First Input Delay.

By measuring the Maximum Potential First Input Delay, you’ll know how long users will wait when interacting with the page after seeing the first content.

How to Measure the First Input Delay

Being a field metric, First Input Delay can be only measured by a few tools:

You can also measure FID in JavaScript by using the Event Timing API.

You can measure the proxy metric, Total Blocking Time, on these other tools:

Measuring FID and TBT with PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights give you the easiest opportunity to measure the First Input Delay score on a page basis, as well as the Total Blocking Time:

PageSpeed Insight scores - FID and TTB grades

Measuring FID with Search Console

If you want to assess your site’s sitewide FID performance, you should take a look at the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. The report is based on the Chrome User Experience Report.

By choosing either the mobile or desktop report, you can identify the FID performance’s potential issues and dive deeper into the URLs affected by the same problem — for instance, FID Issue: longer than 100 ms.

Search Console report - FID issues

What factors affect FID and cause a slow score on WordPress

At this point, you can guess that FID is mainly impacted by JavaScript execution. When the browser is busy dealing with heavy JavaScript files, it can’t process other requests, including the users’ ones.

As a result, interactivity is poor; JavaScript execution times are longer; the main thread is busy and blocked. In short, the page can’t respond to user inputs nor interactions.

We’ll see different ways to fix these issues.

Since JavaScript is the key to improving FID, you should be aware that having many plugins — especially the JavaScript-based ones — could also affect the First Input Delay grade. You should avoid any unnecessary JavaScript execution on the pages where the plugin is not needed. It’s also important to remove any plugin that is not essential.

Heavy WordPress themes can also affect the First Input Delay grade. They have more JS files, complex layouts, and an inefficient style that will affect the main thread — therefore, the FID performance.

That’s why the less complexity the themes have, the better. And that’s also why the tendency now is to simplify everything: layouts, animations, more native JS use vs. relying on complex libraries.

We’ll go over the actions to improve FID in the next section. If you prefer, you can first watch the video that shows how to optimize FID with WP Rocket!

How to Reduce the First Input Delay Longer Than 100 ms or 300 ms on Mobile and Desktop

Improving how the browser deals with JavaScript execution reduces the First Input Delay on WordPress and enhances the FID score.

The goal is to make the process faster and smoother so that interactivity and responsiveness can get better.

If your FID grade has any issues, in the Core Web Vitals report on Search Console you’ll read “FID issue: longer than 100ms” or “FID issue: longer than 300ms“. The issue can be from mobile and/or desktop.

There are several ways to optimize the First Input Delay grade on WordPress:

Let’s see in detail what actions you should take and what’s the performance impact.

1. Defer JavaScript

Performance Impact: high

As for optimizing the JavaScript execution, you should defer Javascript files.

By deferring JavaScript files, these render-blocking resources will be loaded after the browser has rendered the most relevant content — that is, the content needed to let users interact with the page.

As a result, the loading time will improve, as well as the FID grade.

Once you have identified the JS resources to defer, you should add the defer attribute to the JavaScript files. The browser will then know which files to defer until the page rendering is complete.

Here’s an example of the defer attribute:

<script defer src="/example-js-script"></script>

You can easily manage the JavaScript files’ deferring with WP Rocket and its Load Javascript Deferred feature.

You’ll find this option in the File optimization tab. You’ll also be able to exclude specific JS files from being deferred — in case you need this option due to any conflict.

File optimization Tab - Load JavaScript deferred

You’ll address the “Eliminate render-blocking resources” and “Reduce the impact of third party code” PageSpeed recommendations — even though the JS render-blocking resources issues don’t stop here.

Keep reading to learn what other actions you should implement.

2. Remove Unused JavaScript

Performance Impact: medium

You can also tackle the JS issues by removing the unused JavaScript files that slow downloading time and make interactivity worse.

Unused JS files are the JavaScript resources not essential for rendering the page or not useful at all. Yet, these files are in the code, so you should manage them. Examples of unused JS files are the third-party JavaScript files such as the analytics and ads tracking codes.

The PageSpeed Insights report shows you the list of the unused JS files you should take care of:

List of unused Javascript files- PageSpeed Insights Report

You have two options to tackle unused Javascript files:

1. Load the JavaScript files only when needed.
You can use plugins such as Perfmatters and Assets Cleanup to load these files only when needed. The execution of JavaScript files should be disabled in any other case. As an additional tip, you may ask your theme and plugin developers to ensure that only the needed assets are loaded when their respective features are used.

2. Delay the JavaScript files.
Delaying JavaScript resources means that the JavaScript files won’t be loaded until the first user interaction (e.g., scrolling, clicking a button). In other words, no JS files will be loaded unless there’s user interaction. It’s important to keep in mind that not all the scripts from the PageSpeed recommendation list, like the one included above, can be safely delayed.

An additional advantage of delaying JavaScript is that Lighthouse won’t detect any JS files. As a result, the tool won’t include any of these JS resources in the “Remove unused Javascript files” recommendation.

To be clear: you shouldn’t delay JS files to solve this PSI recommendation. You’ll find more information about the main reason why you should delay JS in the next point. However, it’s useful for you to know as an added value for improving your PSI score.

So, how can you delay JavaScript files? You can use a free plugin such as Flying Scripts.

On the other hand, you can take advantage of WP Rocket and its Delay JavaScript execution feature. The File optimization tab allows you to delay the JavaScript execution in a few clicks.

File optimization tab - Delay JavaScript execution

Lastly, here’s a list of other plugins that can help you to minimize unused JS. We recommend using them carefully:

Removing unused Javascript files will address the specific PageSpeed recommendation listed in the report. You’ll also address the “Eliminating render-blocking resources” and “Reducing javascript execution time” recommendations.

c3f3153aff0b1618406603-LCP.png

Don’t Miss Out!

The Core Web Vitals Cheat Sheets are the easiest and fastest way to learn how to optimize LCP, FID, and CLS and prioritize your performance tasks.Yes, I Want This!

3. Delay JS Execution Time Until User Interaction

Performance impact: very high

You can optimize JavaScript resources and prioritize the scripts needed for interaction by delaying the JS files and their execution until user interaction.

In other words, no JavaScript files will be loaded until user interaction, such as clicking a button or scrolling the content.

As explained above, you should delay all the JavaScript files that affect loading time and interaction for no reason, such as the unused JS files included in the previous section.

As you already know, you have different options to delay JavaScript files. You can use a free plugin such as Flying Scripts or take advantage of the Delay JavaScript execution feature option provided by WP Rocket — more details above.

This is how you’ll address the “Reduce javascript execution time” PSI recommendation.

4. Minify JS

Performance impact: low

Another effective way to manage the JavaScript execution time goes through the minification of JavaScript files.

By minifying JS files, you’ll remove any comments, line breaks, and white spaces included in the code. The goal is to make the files’ size smaller and faster.

Minification can be time-consuming, and there’s always the risk of missing out on anything. For these reasons, it’s best to use a minification tool or use WP Rocket. WP Rocket is the easiest way to minify JS files in a few clicks. You only have to enable the Minify JavaScript file option in the file optimization tab.

File optimization tab - Minifying JS files

You’ll address the following PageSpeed Insights recommendations:

  • Minify JS
  • Avoid enormous network payloads.

5. Remove (or Reduce) Unused CSS

Performance impact: medium

As explained in the LCP section, removing or reducing unused CSS helps improve loading time — therefore, it improves interactivity and the FID metric.

WP Rocket offers a powerful feature that allows you to tackle unused CSS in one click. You only need to enable the option below, and the plugin will remove the unused CSS included in the HTML of the page.

By enabling this feature, you’ll easily address the “Reduce unused CSS” recommendation.

6. Async or Defer CSS

Performance impact: medium

The main thread work can have a significant impact on interactivity and FID performance. That’s why one of the PSI recommendations is “Minimize main thread work.” To address the issue and improve FID time, you should defer or async the CSS files.

In the Defer JavaScript section, you read why defer is essential to allow the browser to focus only on the resources essential to page rendering. The same goes for the CSS files that are render-blocking resources.

An option is to include the Defer attribute to all the CSS files:

<script defer src="/example-css-script"></script>

And here’s another 2-step process to make the CSS render-blocking resources load asynchronously:

  1. Extract and inline the Critical Path CSS (CPCSS) using an available generator tool like this one.
  2. Load the rest of the classes asynchronously by applying the following pattern.

If you’re looking for more detailed information, we recommend you read the dedicated Google resource.

An extra tip to keep in mind is to avoid placing large non-critical CSS code in the <head> of the code.

If you’re looking for a faster and easier way to quickly take care of both critical and non-critical CSS, WP Rocket can help you. Under Optimize CSS delivery, our cache plugin offers the Load CSS asynchronously option that defers non-critical CSS and inline critical CSS.

You’ll remove all the render-blocking CSS resources by enabling the option in the File Optimization tab:

Please note that if you have already enabled the Remove Unused CSS option (RUCSS), you can’t choose this option — simply because you don’t need it. WP Rocket is already optimizing CSS files at its best. We recommend optimizing CSS Delivery only in case RUCSS is not working for you.

By implementing these actions, you’ll take care once again of the “Eliminate render-blocking resources” PageSpeed Insights recommendations. You’ll also address the  “Avoid chaining critical requests” recommendation.

7. Compress text files

Performance impact: high

As you can guess at this point, compression is something you need to take care of. It goes without saying that “Enable text compression” is one of the PSI recommendations that apply to FID times.

By compression and reducing files’ size, the browser and the server will send over files faster. The browser will load these resources quicker.

The most common compression formats are Gzip and Brotli. Brotli is the most recommended format right now. You can read more about Brotli and GZIP in our dedicated article.

The easiest way to enable Gzip compression on WordPress is using a plugin. You can choose between different options, from the Enable Gzip Compression plugin to WP Rocket, which includes GZIP compression by default. Keep in mind that some hosts enable GZIP compression automatically.

8. Break up Long Tasks

Performance impact: high

As we explained at the beginning of the article, when the main thread is busy and blocked, the FID grade is negatively affected, and the page can’t respond to user inputs nor interactions.

The main thread is blocked because of the long tasks that the browser can’t interrupt — that is, all the tasks running longer than 50 ms. That’s why when the main thread is blocked, a page can’t respond to user inputs, and responsiveness gets affected.

To solve this issue, you should split long-running scripts into smaller chunks that can be run in less than 50ms.

content-visibility is a new powerful CSS property that can help boost the rendering performance by enabling the user agent to skip an element’s rendering work until it is needed.

You can improve your load performance by applying content-visibility: auto; contain-intrinsic-size: 1px 5000px; to elements where you want to delay the paint. Don’t forget the second part: it’s important to fix some usability issues.

Currently, this CSS property works only on Chrome and the majority of browsers based on it.

Lastly, we recommend reading two resources on this topic, about the long tasks and intensive JavaScript.

Source :
https://wp-rocket.me/google-core-web-vitals-wordpress/improve-first-input-delay/

How To Improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) on WordPress

Table of Contents

What is Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) and Why it Matters?

The Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a Core Web Vital metric and measures how long it takes for the largest element to become visible in the viewport. Until the LCP doesn’t load, you won’t see almost anything on the page. It’s because the LCP element is always above the fold — that’s at the top of the page.

LCP is usually an image or a text block. However, it could also be a video or an animation. The LCP element can differ between mobile and desktop.

As you can guess, the largest element is the most relevant one for user experience and perceived load speed.

Think about it: if the page’s biggest element doesn’t load fast, your user experience won’t be good. You would look at an almost blank page, waiting for the page to load… You could even leave the site! When browsing, a few seconds can make a huge difference.

That’s why Google has included LCP as one of the Core Web Vitals metrics — the metrics measuring how great your user experience is.

In June, LCP will roll out as part of the new ranking factor, the Page Experience Signal. For this reason, Largest Contentful Paint matters not only for delivering a great user experience but also for improving your SEO performance.

What’s more, LCP accounts for 25% of the overall PageSpeed Insights score. By improving its performance, you’ll likely improve your page speed grade.

In short, LCP is one of the most important performance metrics right now.

What’s a Good LCP Score

largest-contentful-paint

good score means that LCP should be less or equal to 2.5 seconds. If so, the page will get the green score and pass the assessment.

If LCP is between 2.5 and 4.0 s, the score “needs improvements” — you’ll get an orange grade.

Suppose the LCP is more than 4 seconds. Then the score is “poor”, and you need to fix it as soon as possible.

Let’s now see how we can find the LCP element.

How to Find and Measure the Largest Contentful Paint

There are several ways to find and measure the LCP element, both with Lab and Field Data. Here are the most popular tools you can use to test LCP.

Lab Data tools:

Field Data tools:

You can learn more about the difference between Lab and Field Data in our post on PageSpeed Insights.

Let’s go over some of the easiest and most effective tools: PageSpeed Insights and Search Console.

Measuring and Finding LCP with PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is the easiest way to measure and find the LCP element.

After testing your URL’s page, you’ll get the LCP grade in the Lab Data and the Field Data (if available). You’ll also get the PageSpeed recommendations to improve your performance.

Go to the Diagnostics area and look for the “Largest Contentful Paint element” section. You’ll discover what’s the LCP element for the page you’re analyzing.

Let’s go over a couple of examples and make things easier to understand.

The LCP example From Mobile

Let’s analyze a WP Rocket blog page from mobile.

We test the performance of the page in the tool and go to the Diagnostics area. The LCP element is the H1, which is the blog post title:

LCP-mobile-example

As long as the main title loads fast, the page will deliver an excellent user experience.

LCP-mobile-example

The LCP example From Desktop

Let’s now take a look at the same URL from the desktop.

We go again to the Diagnostics Area and look for the LCP element. Not surprisingly, LCP is not the same as for mobile. For desktop, the LCP is an image:

LCP-element-desktop

More precisely, it’s the image of the post.

LCP-desktop-example

Since PageSpeed Insights is a page-based tool, we recommend that you run several tests for different pages.

For an overall analysis, you should also take advantage of the Search Console.

Measuring and Finding LCP on Search Console

You can assess your sitewide performance and detect any issues with the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console.

You’ll be able to access both performances from mobile and desktop:

Once you open the report, you’ll see how your site’s pages perform according to each threshold: good, needs improvement, and poor.

Core Web Vitals report mobile tab - Search Console

Search Console report groups each Core Web Vital performance by status, issue type, and URLs.

For example, you might have some URLs not performing well for LCP. If so, in the report, you may read “LCP issue: longer than 2.5 s (mobile).

By clicking on the row related to that specific issue, you’ll land on a page that provides the list of URLs that need to be fixed. While these URLs are an example, they can give you a pretty accurate idea of what’s going on.

It will be pretty easy to find the URL pattern and move forward with the fixing and the validation.

What Factors Affect LCP and Cause a Slow Score

For WordPress sites, three factors affect LCP: slow server response times, render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, and slow resource load time.

Slow Server Response Times

The browser makes a request to the server, but the server takes too long to send the content requested. Since the browser doesn’t receive the content quickly enough, it takes a while to get something rendered on your screen. As a result, load time is not great. The LCP score gets affected.

You’ll fix the issue by improving your Time to First Byte, using a CDN, and establishing third-party connections early.

Render-blocking JavaScript and CSS

The browser makes a request and gets the content from the server. At this point, the browser will render the content and show it, right? Not so fast.

To render any content, the browser has to analyze (or parse) the HTML of the page and make it “readable” into the HTML structure of the page — that’s the DOM tree. After that, the content will be rendered and fully displayed — unless some scripts and stylesheets block the HTML parsing. These scripts and stylesheets are the render-blocking resources.

As a result of this block, the parsing is delayed. Once again, the content you requested takes a bit before being loaded. The LCP performance gets affected again.

You’ll tackle these issues by deferring and removing unused JS files. Don’t worry! You’ll find all the information you need in the next section.

Slow Resource Load Times

Other files can also cause poor performance and a bad user experience: images, videos, and block-level elements like HTML and CSS files.

As you already know, LCP is related to the elements at the top of the page. And this issue comes up precisely when these files are rendered above-the-fold and take too long to load. As a result, loading time and LCP are affected once again.

You’ll manage the resource load times by optimizing images, minifying and compressing CSS, JS, HTML files, and preloading critical assets.

The bottom line: how fast the browser receives and renders the content requested determines the LCP score.

Let’s understand how to fix all these issues in detail.

If you prefer, you can first watch the video that shows how to improve LCP with WP Rocket.

How to Reduce a Largest Contentful Paint Longer Than 2.5 s or 4 s on Mobile and Desktop

Here are ten ways to improve the Largest Contentful Paint performance and fix the Search Console status “LCP issue: longer than 2.5s or LCP issue: longer than 4s“, both from mobile and/or desktop.

1. Improve the Time to First Byte and Reduce Server Response Time

2. Use a CDN

3. Defer JavaScript

4. Remove Unused JavaScript

5. Defer Non-Critical CSS, Inline Critical CSS, and Remove Unused CSS

6. Minify CSS and JS Files

7. Optimize Your Images

8. Compress Text Files

9. Use Preload for Critical Assets

10. Establish Third-party Connections Early.

Let’s see them in detail.

🚀 For each suggestion, you’ll find a piece of information about its performance impact —  from low to high. The highest the impact is, the highest chance that the Largest Contentful Paint score will improve after following that specific recommendation.

1. Improve the Time to First Byte and Reduce Server Response Time

Performance Impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

One of the main reasons for a bad LCP is a slow server response time.

You can measure your server response time by looking at the Time to First Byte (TTFB).

Every time you want to consume any piece of content, the browser sends a request to the server. The TTFB measures how long it takes for the browser to receive the first byte of content from the server.

By improving your TTFB, you’ll improve your server response time and the LCP score.

Please note that a good TTFB should be under 200 ms — you can quickly check this metric by testing your URL’s site on WebPageTest.

WebPageTest example

There are two ways to fix a bad server time:

1. Enable Page Caching

By enabling page caching, your site’s pages will be stored as HTML files on the server after the page is loaded for the first time. As a result, the content will be displayed faster. It’s an easy and effective way to improve TTFB.

You can also choose one of the top WordPress hosting providers that include a server-level caching option.

WP Rocket can easily take care of page caching with no effort from your side.

A dedicated tab will allow you to enable mobile caching and set the options you prefer. WP Rocket enables 80% of web performance best practices automatically. So, if you’re in doubt, you’ll get covered anyway!

Cache tab

2. Choose a Fast Server Hosting Service

A fast hosting can make a huge difference in performance. And maybe it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan!

As the first thing, your hosting provider should have servers close to the majority of your users. The closer your users are to the server, the fastest the data will be sent.

You should also choose the right server host type. A dedicated hosting server will ensure the fastest performance. Take into consideration how much traffic your site gets, and make your decision.

By enabling caching and choosing a fast hosting, you’ll take care of the following PageSpeed Insights recommendations:

  • Reduce server response times (TTFB)
  • Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy.

2. Use a CDN

Performance Impact: medium 🚀🚀

A CDN helps you reduce the length of time between the user request and the server response. This amount of time is the latency. The back and forth between the browser request and the server response is the round trip time (RTT).

If your users are located far from the server’s location, it could take a while before all the assets (e.g., images, JS and CSS files, videos ) are sent. Latency and RTT will be high and will affect loading time and the LCP score.

You already saw how the location of your server could affect your site’s performance.

A CDN solves the issue thanks to a global network of servers. No matter where your users are located. Every time they request a page, they will receive the assets from the closest server. Simple as that.

RocketCDN is the best way to let your users access your site quickly and easily.

If you want to know more about the CDN benefits and the different types, you can read our article.

Choosing a CDN will help you address the following PageSpeed recommendations:

  • Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy
  • Enable text compression.

Please note that a CDN will address such recommendations only if properly configured. The default options might not be enough to improve performance as expected.

3. Defer JavaScript

Performance Impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

Render-blocking resources like JavaScript files are one of the main causes of a bad LCP score.

Deferring the JavaScript files will help you tackle the issue. In other words, you’ll change the priority of the JS files being loaded.

Remember? The browser parses the HTML, builds the DOM tree, and then renders the page — unless there is any blocking resource to slow the process down.

By deferring JavaScript, the browser will process and load the JS files only after parsing the HTML document and building the DOM tree. Since there won’t be anything to block the process, rendering will be much faster — and the LCP metric will improve.

You can add the defer attribute to the JavaScript files so that the browser can detect the resources to defer. The browser will analyze the HTML and build the DOM tree with no interruption.

Here’s an example of the defer attribute:

<script defer src="/example-js-script"></script>

The easiest way to manage the JavaScript resources is to take advantage of WP Rocket and its Load Javascript Deferred feature.

You can choose this option in the File optimization tab. What’s more, you can easily exclude specific JS files from being deferred — in case the defer feature conflicts with any file.

File optimization Tab - Load JavaScript deferred

You’ll address the “Eliminate render-blocking resources” PSI recommendation in a few clicks — even though the render-blocking resources issues don’t stop here.

Let’s move to the next point about tackling render-blocking resources.

4. Remove Unused JavaScript

Performance Impact: medium 🚀🚀

Another way to eliminate the render-blocking resources is to remove the JavaScript resources that are not used. They may not be used for two reasons:

  • They’re not used anymore on your site. They’re still in the code but are completely useless.
  • They aren’t included in the above-the-fold content. Therefore, they’re non-critical for building the DOM tree. Yet, these files have a reason to be there (e.g., Google Analytics tracking code).

You can find the list of the unused JS files in the PageSpeed report in the “Remove unused Javascript” section:

List of unused Javascript files - PageSpeed Insights Report

There are two ways to solve this issue in WordPress:

1. Load the JavaScript files only when needed.
For instance, the files should be loaded only on the pages that need that specific file — in any other case, the execution of JS should be disabled. You can take care of this aspect with plugins such as Perfmatters and Assets Cleanup.

2. Delay the JavaScript files.
The JavaScript files won’t be loaded until the first user interaction (e.g., scrolling, clicking a button). If there’s no user interaction, the JS files won’t be loaded at all.

By delaying JavaScript, the JS files won’t be detected by Lighthouse nor listed in the “Remove unused Javascript files” recommendation — even though not all the scripts from the PageSpeed recommendation list can be safely delayed.
For instance, the Google Analytics tracking code is usually included in this PageSpeed Insights recommendation. If you delay the JS files, the Google Analytics JS file won’t be reported anymore.

Note: Delaying JS files doesn’t have the purpose of solving this PSI recommendation per se. However, it works well in addressing this PageSpeed audit and improving your LCP score. So, it’s good for you to know.

So, how can you delay JS resources? You have different options.

If you’re looking for a free plugin to delay JavaScript files, you can use Flying Scripts.

Another way to safely tackle any unused JavaScript is to take advantage of WP Rocket! The plugin allows you to delay the JavaScript execution in a few clicks from the File optimization tab. You can easily add the URLs you want to exclude from delaying execution:

File optimization tab - Delay JavaScript execution

As we mentioned, by removing unused Javascript files, you’ll address the specific PageSpeed recommendation. Overall, you’ll work towards “Eliminating render-blocking resources” and “Reducing javascript execution time”.

Your LCP grade will get another boost.

5. Defer Non-Critical CSS, Inline Critical CSS, and Remove Unused CSS

Performance Impact: medium 🚀🚀

As for the JS files, you should also defer non-critical CSS — all the files not relevant for rendering the page. In other words, you should change the priority for these files, too.

They will load after the browser has rendered the most relevant content on the page.

While deferring the CSS files, you should also inline critical CSS — the resources above-the-fold that need to be loaded as fast as possible. It means that you should identify the critical CSS (or Critical Path CSS) and inline them inside the HTML structure.

If you want to implement both actions on WordPress, here’s how the process looks like:

  1. First, you should extract and inline the Critical Path CSS (CPCSS) using one available generator tool. You can find one here.
  2. Then, you should load the rest of the classes asynchronously by applying the following pattern.

You can read more about the process in the dedicated Google resource.

Another tip is to avoid placing large non-critical CSS code in the <head> of the code.

If you want to take care of both critical and non-critical CSS quickly, you can take advantage of WP Rocket’s features!

An effective way to tackle CSS is to remove unused CSS. WP Rocket can also help you to do it easily, thanks to its dedicated feature. You only need to enable the Remove unused CSS option, and the plugin will remove the unused CSS from the HTML of each page.

Remove Unused CSS or load CSS asynchronously - Source: WP Rocket

By implementing these actions, you’ll address the “Eliminate render-blocking resources”, “Reduce unused CSS”, and “Avoid chaining critical requests” PageSpeed Insights recommendations.

6. Minify CSS and JS Files

Performance Impact: low 🚀

Another effective way to optimize Largest Contentful Paint is to minify CSS and JS files.

Minification comes down to optimizing your code by making it more compact. It means to remove any white spaces, line breaks, and comments included in the code. As a result, minification will reduce CSS and JS files’ size and make them load faster.

It sounds easy, but the reality is more complicated. It’s not always simple to minify both file types and be sure to have excluded all the right resources — especially if you’re not a developer. Either way, it’s time-consuming.

The easiest and most effective way to take care of minification is to use a plugin like WP Rocket.

In the file optimization tab, you’ll have the opportunity to minify both CSS and JavaScript files.

 File optimization tab - Minifying CSS and JS files

You’ll address the following PageSpeed Insights recommendations:

  • Minify CSS
  • Minify JS
  • Avoid enormous network payloads.

7. Optimize Your Images

Performance Impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

Optimizing images is another relevant way to fix a bad LCP score.

Images are often the LCP element from mobile or desktop. By improving their loading time, you’ll boost the Largest Contentful Paint performance.

Here’s what you can do to fix any performance issues about images.

Compress and resize your images. You should reduce the file size without losing quality. The smaller the image dimension is, the faster the loading time will be.

To be clear: if you use a tool to optimize your images on the desktop, you will only optimize the original size. The images that you upload on WordPress won’t be resized. As you may know, in WordPress, there are different image sizes. Unless you use a proper image optimization plugin, you won’t optimize anything for performance.

For optimizing a few images, you could use a tool like ImageOptim. On the other hand, if you want to optimize more images and their thumbnails in bulk, Imagify is the perfect solution. You’ll reduce your images’ weight without sacrificing their quality. You’ll save plenty of time!

Convert your images into new formats. Overall, Google recommends the WebP format. And that’s why all WordPress image optimizer plugins now include the option to convert images to WebP. Other formats you may take into account are JPEG 2000 and JPEG XR.  These formats are smaller than the JPEG, PNG, and GIF ones and help improve performance.

Use responsive images. You shouldn’t use the same images’ size for desktop and mobile. For instance, if the desktop image size is large, the mobile image size should be medium.

Page builders like Elementor allow users to upload different image sizes according to the device. Mobile image optimization is pretty essential, and the mobile score matters the most. Don’t underestimate its impact on your LCP grade!

Exclude the LCP element from lazy-loading. While overall lazy-load helps improve loading time, it can make the LCP score worse, especially when the LCP element is an image and gets lazy-loaded. That’s why excluding the LCP element from lazy-load and displaying it directly in the HTML of the page is an excellent way to optimize the LCP score.

Use a static image instead of a slider. Sliders can be very heavy to load because of the code. On the other hand, a static image made by HTML code is lighter and faster.

By optimizing your images, you’ll address the following PageSpeed Insights audits:

  • Serve images in next-gen formats
  • Properly size images
  • Efficiently encode images
  • Avoid enormous network payloads.

8. Compress Text Files

Performance Impact: high 🚀🚀🚀

You should also compress text files such as HTML, CSS, or JavaScript resources.

Compression means to “zip” your files in a smaller and lighter format so that they load faster. Once you reduce their size, the transfer between browser and server will be quicker. The browser will be able to load these resources faster. Load time and LCP will improve.

You can use compression formats such as GZIP and Brotli. On the one hand, GZIP is supported by most of the hosts. On the other one, Brotli is more performant and currently mostly recommended. Learn more about  GZIP vs. Brotli in our blog post.

You can easily enable GZIP compression on WordPress by using a plugin. You can choose between different options, from the straightforward Enable Gzip Compression plugin to WP Rocket, which automatically includes GZIP compression. Also, some hosts enable GZIP compression by default.

Either way, you’ll address the “Enable text compression” PageSpeed recommendation.

9. Use Preload for Critical Assets (As the Largest Contentful Paint Image)

Performance Impact: low 🚀

At this point, you know how much the assets above the fold are critical for a good performance score. These critical resources can be fonts, images, videos, CSS, or JavaScript files.

To improve your LCP score, you should always make the critical assets load as fast as possible.

So, you may be wondering how to preload the Largest Contentful Paint image.

The Preload option comes in handy. It tells the browser to prioritize the load of these resources. In other words, the Preload prevents the browser from discovering and loading these critical files (including the LCP image) until much later.

You can include the rel=”preload” in the code:

<link rel="preload" as="script" href="script.js">
<link rel="preload" as="style" href="style.css">
<link rel="preload" as="image" href="img.png">
<link rel="preload" as="video" href="vid.webm" type="video/webm">
<link rel="preload" href="font.woff2" as="font" type="font/woff2" crossorigin>

Source: Google

For preloading the LCP image, you can also use a plugin like Perfmatters.

If you need to preload fonts, you can take advantage of the WP Rocket feature (only if you have not enabled the Remove Unused CSS feature):

Preload tab - Preload fonts feature

You can read more about the best practices for web font preloading in our dedicated article.

By using preload for critical assets, you’ll address the “Preload key requests” PageSpeed recommendation.

10. Establish Third-party Connections Early

Performance Impact: low 🚀

Making the third-party connections faster is an additional way to optimize your LCP performance.

You should use the Preconnect option.

Let’s say that there’s a CSS or JS file requested from a third-party, such as Facebook or Google Analytics. The browser will request the external resource.

If enabled, the Preconnect option tells the browser to establish a connection with the external domain as fast as possible. The browser will then handle the request in parallel with the ongoing rendering process.

You can include the rel=”preconnect” in your code:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://example.com">.

As an alternative, you can use a plugin as Perfmatters.

Since your browser may not support the preconnect option, it’s always best to implement dns-prefetch as a fallback technique. You’ll then resolve the DNS lookups faster. In other words, the external files will load more quickly, especially on mobile networks.

You can add the rel=”dns-prefetch” to your code — as a separate tag from the preconnect attribute:

<head>
 …
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://example.com">
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://example.com">
</head>

WP Rocket’s Preload tab allows you to prefetch the DNS requests. You only have to specify the external hosts to be prefetched:

Preload tab - Prefetch DNS requests

By establishing third-party connections earlier, you’ll improve the Time to First Byte and the server response time. You’ll also address the “Preconnect to required origins” PageSpeed recommendation.

Start Optimizing Your LCP Score on WordPress Today

You should now understand why Largest Contentful Paint is essential for performance and user experience and how you can improve its score. By applying all these optimization techniques, you’ll enhance the LCP grade on your WordPress site.

Not a WP Rocket customer yet? Save yourself time and let WP Rocket do the job for you. WP Rocket is the easiest way to get an excellent LCP score. You don’t even have to touch any settings! WP Rocket will automatically apply 80% of web performance best practices. You’ll see an instant improvement to the naked eye in your Core Web Vitals scores right away.

What’s more, you’ll stop managing multiple web performance plugins. You will only need WP Rocket to boost your LCP grade — no technical knowledge required, we promise!

Do you want to take a look first? Then watch our video and learn how to improve Largest Contentful Paint with WP Rocket in a few clicks!

  • First Input Delay (FID)What’s the First Input Delay and what’s the impact on UX and SEO performance? On this page, you’ll learn what FID is, how you can test it, and what factors affect its grade. You’ll also understand how to fix a bad score from mobile and desktop (FID longer than 100 or 300 ms) and improve your WordPress performance. Everything in plain English!
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)Wondering what Cumulative Layout Shift means and what’s the impact on your UX and SEO performance? Keep reading! You’ll find out what CLS is, how you can test it, and what factors affect its score. You’ll discover how to avoid large layout shifts and fix a bad grade from mobile and desktop (Cumulative Layout Shift more than 0.25 or 0.1 s). Everything in plain English!

    Source :
    https://wp-rocket.me/google-core-web-vitals-wordpress/improve-largest-contentful-paint/