Core Web Vitals quick wins for Next.js blogs

Core Web Vitals are mostly about perceived speed and layout stability. For a content blog, you can often improve scores without major rewrites.

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

• Keep your hero simple: one heading, one paragraph, one CTA.
• Avoid loading heavy third-party scripts on first paint.
• Make sure images have stable dimensions.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

• Reserve space for anything that loads later: ads, embeds, widgets.
• Avoid inserting new UI above the fold after initial render.
• Prefer predictable typography (no swapping large fonts late).

INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

• Keep client components small.
• Reduce long-running effects.
• Don’t render large lists with heavy client-side logic.

Ads + performance (practical notes)

Ads can hurt scores when they shift layout. A few habits help:

• Render ads only after consent.
• Give ad containers a consistent wrapper so layout stays stable.
• Don’t stack multiple units near the top of the page.

A quick checklist

• Run Lighthouse on mobile.
• Fix the biggest offender first (usually LCP).
• Validate CLS on pages that have ads.
• Re-test in an incognito window.

You don’t need perfection—just a stable, fast experience that readers (and reviewers) trust.