Passing Core Web Vitals: A Technical SEO & Page Speed Overhaul
Client: A professional services firm with a beautiful, custom WordPress site that had zero traffic.
Challenges We Faced
The client had paid a designer for a “pretty” site, but it was built with no web development seo services and was technically “broken”:
Failing All Core Web Vitals
The site was extremely slow due to huge uncompressed images affecting LCP, 15+ non-essential plugins hurting INP, and clashing animations and pop-ups causing CLS issues.
Poor Crawlability
The site had a confusing URL structure and critical service pages were only reachable via JavaScript links.
No Mobile-First Design
The mobile site was a “lesser” version, hiding 50% of the content that was visible on desktop.
No Organic Traffic
Despite being live for a year, the site had almost zero organic traffic.
Fix Your Slow Website
“Is your beautiful website failing to rank? Our web development seo services will fix your technical issues and pass Core Web Vitals.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Page Speed & Core Web Vitals
This was our 100% focus. We compressed all images, minified CSS/JS, and optimized the server.
We fixed the CLS issue by defining all image/div sizes in the CSS.
WordPress & CMS Optimization
We audited all 15 plugins, removed 7 “bloated” ones, and replaced them with lightweight, efficient alternatives.
Technical SEO Architecture
We fixed the URL structure and rebuilt the internal linking using standard HTML links to ensure 100% crawlability.
Mobile-First Indexing
We re-engineered the mobile theme to ensure 100% content parity with the desktop version, a critical fix for website design and search engine optimization.
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google PageSpeed Score (Mobile) | 28 | 92 | +228% |
| Core Web Vitals (Mobile) | “Failing” (100% URLs) | “Good” (96% URLs) | Passed |
| Organic Traffic | 500/mo | 4,500/mo | +800% |
Free Core Web Vitals Analysis
“Failing your CWV test? Request a Free PageSpeed Analysis and let our website design and seo company build your optimization plan!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- A “pretty” web design is useless if it’s not built on a strong web development seo foundation.
- Page Speed & Core Web Vitals are direct ranking factors. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to find your errors.
- Audit your plugins. Bloated plugins are the #1 killer of page speed on WordPress.
- Your mobile site must have the exact same content as your desktop site to succeed in Mobile-First Indexing.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The WordPress & CMS Optimization (plugin audit) was a huge, immediate win for site speed.
- Fixing CLS (layout shift) by defining element sizes was a key technical fix.
- Monitoring the GSC Core Web Vitals report to see Google validate our fixes and “pass” the site.
