Have you ever visited a website and as you were reading it, the website content shifted and moved? Have you been ready to click on a button or link and the page shifted causing you to click on something else or not click on anything at all?
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is Google’s new metric that has rolled out the summer of 2020 and will be in effect in 2021 as a ranking factor. This will be come a very big deal for ranking and honestly fixing it will improve user experience; which is what Google aims for. To present to you, the user, with websites that are a good user experience with relevant content.
Why Does CLS Occur?
Some common reasons for CLS include:
- Images without dimensions
- Tables without dimensions
- Embedded elements, such as iframes and ads, that have no dimension defined
- Dynamic content that doesn’t have a preset size on the page and loads after the page is mostly rendered
What is a Good CLS Score?
You should strive for a CLS score of less than 0.1. There are many tools out there that can help you measure this including Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
What Can You Do About It?
Make sure every area that contains content has dimensions to it. This includes images, video, tabled information, etc.
A properly designed site should have all areas of it pre-defined before the page starts to load. This gives the best user experience. So not only will you be helping your google rankings in 2021, but you also will be improving your user experience if you fix any CLS issues.
How we can help
Sometimes fixing CLS issues can be an involved task that you’d need a programmer to fix. We have been helping clients since this summer fix their issues and help improve their rankings in search engines. Contact us Today to help!
