Cumulative Layout Shift is perhaps the trickiest metric to master as a part of Google’s new Core Web Vitals. This metric will play a core part in your “Page Experience” ranking that Google will be implementing from Mid-June onwards. For more information on the other Core Web Vitals, please reads the prior two articles covering First Input Delay and Largest Contentful Paint from this mini-series. Otherwise, scroll down to learn what exactly is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) from the number one SEO Agency in Leeds – Wildfire Marketing.
What is Cumulative Layout Shift
Has this ever happened to you? You’re looking for some info, you click the top result and the page begins to load. That annoying cookie notice shows up and, just as you’re about to click reject, an image pops in. The reject button shifts down and now you’ve agreed to a thousand third-party cookies that are going to ensure every ad you see is going to be related to that info. It’s certainly annoying, and that’s what Google is aiming to curtail with their new Cumulative Layout Shift metric.
CLS essentially measures the sum total of layout shifts that occur unexpectedly from one rendered frame to the next.
What Constitutes a Layout Shift?
A Layout Shift is whenever an element on a page changes size or position. This can be intended, such as a drop-down menu or clicking on a text box to read more info. What Google is tracking, however, is unexpected layout shifts. These can be caused by ads, which often load in from an external source and move important info or interactive elements to make way for themselves. It can also be caused by simple errors such as an image with undefined dimensions. Simply put, if it moves and it’s not supposed to it’s going to affect your CLS score.
You should aim for a CLS score of about 0.1, Google currently offers tools and formulas to calculate this score.
How Do you Optimize your Site for CLS and Other Core Web Vitals?
From our research, we can offer these key tips to improve your sites Core Web Vitals and ensure a high Page Experience ranking that will improve your position in Google Results.
- Keep Blog Pages simple and quick. Minimise pop-ups and ads, optimise your images and keep interactive content away from the first screen they’ll see.
- Be User-Friendly. From now on, obtrusive pop-ups and hard to use sites aren’t just affecting your customers. It’s affecting your results position. Make sure your customer experience is as seamless as possible for everyone’s benefit
- Get a quickly loaded, useful interactive element in the user’s view quickly. The high-quality gif background you have right now might look great, but if it takes forever to load you may find your results position dramatically drop in June. A simple image, a quick selection of buttons, etc could help improve your results.
We hope this mini-series has shown you the importance and given you a detailed explanation of Core Web Vitals. For more information, advice or improvements to Cumulative Layout Shift, First Input Delay or Largest Contentful Paint – trust the Number one SEO agency in Leeds today and contact us.