Google Core Web Vitals: CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift

Google now tracks the user experience as a set of variables that will impact your website ranking in the search engines. Known as Core Web Vitals, they measure how quickly and easily users can gain access to your content, and also are focused on how fast your pages load. In short, Google is trying to make the web as user friendly as possible; and wants to display results in which they are confident the user will have a good experience. In this three-part series, we will explore what you need to know, and how to improve your website Core Web Vitals.

There are three important factors you need to monitor and adjust for improvement:

• LCP - Largest Contentful Paint
• FID - First Input Delay
• CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift

CLS - Cumulative Layout Shift

CLS occurs when you go to click on a page element, and the element moves on the page.

• Low CLS ensures the page is delightful
• Measures visual stability of the web page

You will want to continuously monitor this score for the pages of your website. An acceptable score, by Google’s standards is less than 0.1 seconds. Here are a few ideas for how to optimize and improve your CLS score:

• Always include size attributes on your images and video elements. This approach ensures that the browser can allocate the correct amount of space in the document while the image is loading.
• Never insert content above existing content, except in response to a user interaction. This ensures any layout shifts that occur are expected.
• Prefer transform animations to animations of properties that trigger layout changes.

If you need help improving your Cumulative Layout Shift on your web pages – give Wendy a call 425-885-9976 – to schedule a free consultation!

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