Passing Google’s "Core Web Vitals": Optimizing a High-Traffic News Portal

Client Profile: An emerging Online News Portal with 100k+ monthly visitors.
Tech Stack: MERN Stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node).

1. The Challenge

The site was crashing during breaking news events. Furthermore, Google penalized their SEO rankings because the site failed “Core Web Vitals” (CWV)—it was too slow and visually unstable (CLS issues).

 

2. Our Solution: Performance Engineering

We didn’t just redesign; we re-engineered.

  • Server Architecture: Migrated to AWS Cloud with auto-scaling to handle traffic spikes.
  • Next-Gen Formats: Converted all images to WebP and implemented Lazy Loading.
  • Code Minification: Removed bloated JavaScript that was blocking the main thread.
Google PageSpeed Insights result showing 96 out of 100 mobile score after optimization.
3. The Results
  • PageSpeed Score: Improved from 35 (Red) to 96 (Green).
  • Uptime: Achieved 99.99% uptime even during major news events.
  • SEO Boost: Organic traffic increased by 50% within 2 months as a direct result of passing Core Web Vitals.