Having a website listed and ranked on search engines is an accomplishment in the highly competitive digital landscape. However, it can be disheartening when these sites fail to attract the expected traffic.

Understanding why this occurs is vital for website owners looking to expand their visibility and engage directly with their target audience.

In this article, we’ll look into why websites struggle with traffic issues despite their best efforts and explore strategies to overcome such obstacles.

• Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
• Technical SEO Issues
• Fresh Content
• User Experience Impact on Traffic
• FAQ: How can a website maximize its organic traffic through improved search engine rankings?

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

Failure to optimize keywords is an integral factor that prevents brands from ranking highly in search results. Search engines rely on keywords to understand the relevance of a website to specific search queries.

Target keywords must be effectively integrated into the website’s content, titles, headings and meta tags to increase its chances of ranking higher in search results and driving organic traffic.

Another critical aspect is the quality and relevance of the website’s content. Search engines prioritize high-quality and informative content that aligns with user intent. Content that does not demonstrate E-E-A-T — experience, expertise, authority and trust — risks being penalized in search engine results.

One of the best ways to start your keyword research for your brand is to begin with a topic cluster. Start by creating your pillar content. This content should be the main focus of your blog or site. For example, with Bruce Clay, our pillar content is focused on SEO. SEO is what we do, and it’s at the heart of our brand.

From here, you can focus on creating cluster content. Cluster content is content that can be hyperlinked from your pillar content.

For example, we have SEO as our pillar content and have a variety of cluster content, such as online SEO training, search engine marketing, pay-per-click marketing, content development and social media advertising.

All of these clusters are secondary to our pillar pieces, but they also all tie back to our pillar pieces. You can create multiple topic clusters for your site.

The point of creating cluster content is that you can create a web of hyperlinks between all the content within a single cluster. It all feeds back into one another.

This is a broad overview; we take it a step further by creating additional clusters for each, such as a cluster for content development where the pillar piece is the content development page, and the cluster pages are all subtopics of pay-per-click marketing.

Keywords are essential with cluster content because each piece of the topic cluster (both pillar content and cluster content) should have its own keyword focus.

Start with the high-level topic keyword for the pillar content, then move into the keyword focus for each subtopic or cluster content topic. Internally link between each page and all of the other pages.

Technical SEO Issues

Left unaddressed, technical SEO issues can damage a website’s search engine rankings.

Factors such as slow loading times, broken links, poor website structure and improper use of headers and tags can negatively affect user experience.

It’s a good habit to regularly audit your site to identify and optimize these technical aspects. Doing so will improve its performance, enhance user experience and ultimately increase organic traffic.

Optimizing title tags and meta descriptions is another important element in driving organic traffic. These elements play a significant role in conveying the relevance and value of a webpage to search engine users.

Poorly crafted or uninformative title tags and meta descriptions may lead users to overlook the website in search results. Optimizing these elements with compelling and relevant information, including target keywords, can increase click-through rates.

SERPStat ran a study where they audited 288 million pages across thousands of websites. They found the greatest technical SEO issues were mark-up-related issues at 29.56%, and meta tags at 26.62%. When it came to mark-up-related issues, a missing Twitter/X card, missing open graph and missing schema.org were the top issues.

Make sure that these are all in working order on your site. As far as meta tags are concerned, the most common issues they found were the extra-long title and the length of the meta tag description.

There are a variety of SEO tools that you can use with your site to check the length of both your meta tag title and description. Yoast SEO is a common choice for WordPress-based sites, or you can use this simple character count tool. The goal is 50–60 characters for your meta title and 150–160 characters for your meta description.

Fresh Content

Search engines value fresh and regularly updated content. A whopping 27% of all high-performing content is no more than a month old. New, ongoing content tells search engines that the site is active and hints that its content will be more relevant than sites that rarely offer new information.

So, develop a content strategy that includes generating new content and refreshing old content regularly to help attract search engine crawlers and boost rankings.

Fresh content goes beyond search engine traffic — it gives visitors to your site a reason to keep coming back. New content can keep readers interested and give them a reason to spend more time on your site.

Use your target audience avatar to determine your audience’s biggest pain points and work to create fresh content that addresses them weekly for the best results.

User Experience Impact on Traffic

User experience is essential in search engine rankings and organic traffic. When search engines determine the ranking of websites, they evaluate the site user’s experience. To do this, they look at real-time data: bounce rate, time spent on site, page load speed and whether the site is mobile-friendly.

A website with slow loading times, difficult navigation, or lack of mobile optimization may experience lower organic traffic. Optimizing the website for a smooth and seamless user experience across devices is vital.

If you’re failing to generate traffic to your website, it’s because you are not paying attention to the factors that influence search engine ranking — keyword optimization, technical SEO, content quality and user experience. Improve these areas and you will improve organic traffic, visibility, engagement and conversions.

Unhappy with your search engine ranking and traffic volume? Our SEO experts can help. Contact us for a free consultation today.

FAQ: How can a website maximize its organic traffic through improved search engine rankings?

Maximizing organic traffic through improved search engine rankings is a crucial goal for any website to increase its online visibility and reach a wider audience. Attaining this objective requires an integrated strategy combining on-page and offline strategies, technical optimizations and content enhancement.

Optimizing on-page SEO is crucial for optimal search engine ranking. To do this, high-quality and relevant content is required.

Utilizing relevant keywords naturally throughout the content, optimizing meta tags, headings and improving the overall user experience can significantly boost a website’s search engine ranking. Regularly updating and refreshing content keeps it current and engaging for visitors and search engine algorithms.

Off-page SEO plays a vital role in increasing organic traffic to websites. Search engines can verify that your website is reliable by building high-quality links from relevant and reputable websites while engaging with your audience.

Creating a solid presence on social media can indirectly affect search rankings, increasing brand recognition and driving more organic traffic to your website.

Additionally, technical SEO plays a crucial role in website optimization. Ensuring that the site’s structure is user-friendly and mobile-responsive is essential for ranking well in search engines.

Optimizing page load times, implementing secure HTTPS protocols and making XML sitemaps can enhance the overall user experience and positively impact search engine rankings.

Lastly, ongoing monitoring and analytics are essential. Regularly reviewing website performance through tools like Google Analytics and Search Console can provide valuable insights.

By analyzing which keywords drive traffic, understanding user behavior and adjusting your strategies accordingly, you can continually optimize your website to maximize organic traffic and improve search engine rankings.

Optimizing a website for better search engine rankings requires a holistic approach encompassing on-page, off-page, technical and analytical aspects. By creating high-quality content, acquiring authoritative backlinks, maintaining a technically sound website and using data-driven insights to make improvements, a website can maximize organic traffic and increase its visibility in search engine results.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Maximizing Organic Traffic for a Website with Search Engine Rankings

1. Keyword Optimization: Identify target keywords relevant to your website’s content and align with user search intent. Incorporate these keywords into your website’s content, titles, headings and meta tags.
2. Content Quality and Relevance: Create high-quality content that meets the needs of your target audience. Provide them with content that delivers value. Ensure that your content aligns with user search intent and addresses their queries effectively.
3. Technical Optimization: Regularly audit and optimize your website for technical SEO issues such as slow loading times, broken links and proper website structure. Ensure that headers and tags are used correctly to provide a clear and organized content structure.
4. Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Craft compelling and relevant title tags and meta descriptions for each webpage, incorporating target keywords and accurately reflecting the content. Ensure these tags provide enticing information and encourage users to click through to your website.
5. Regular Content Updates: Implement a content strategy that regularly updates existing pages and creates fresh content. Focus on providing valuable and up-to-date information to attract search engine crawlers and keep your website active and relevant.
6. User Experience Optimization: Optimize your website for a smooth and seamless user experience. Improve page load speed, simplify navigation and ensure mobile optimization for a user-friendly browsing experience.
7. Social Media Promotion: Leverage social media platforms to promote your website’s content and attract organic traffic. Share snippets of your content, engage with your audience and encourage social sharing to increase visibility.
8. Monitor and Analyze Performance: Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor your website’s performance. Analyze user behavior, traffic sources and engagement metrics to identify areas for improvement and adjust your strategies accordingly.
9. Stay Updated with SEO Trends: Stay informed about the latest SEO trends to adapt your optimization strategies. Follow reputable industry blogs, attend webinars and participate in forums to stay up-to-date with the evolving SEO landscape.

The post Why Do Sites Struggle with Traffic and What Can SEO Do About It? appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

Google started rolling out its page experience algorithm update June 15 and finished on September 2, 2021. This update consists of several factors — each of which we’ve written about at length in our page experience guide e-book.

In this article, though, we’ll give a high-level overview of what CMOs need to know so they can help their team and their website meet the new ranking opportunities. For a more in-depth how-to, check out our free e-book linked above.

• Page experience ranking factors
• FAQ: How does the Page Experience Update impact website rankings and what should CMOs be aware of?

Google clarified that you don’t need all core web vitals scores to be “good” in order to get some page experience ranking boost.

However, out of a million websites competing for your keywords, 10 competitors will have done the work to be considered “good” across the board. If you do not, you may lose Page 1 to them.

7 Page Experience Ranking Factors

Google combined some of the algorithmic signals you might have already been optimizing for with a new set of signals to create the page experience update.

This update combined these ranking criteria you may already know:

• Mobile-friendliness
• HTTPS
• No intrusive interstitials

With a new set of criteria called core web vitals:

• Page load performance – Largest Contentful Paint
• Responsiveness – First Input Delay
• Visual stability – Cumulative Layout Shift

Let’s look at each factor starting with the three new core web vitals.

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP measures webpage load performance. More specifically, LCP measures how fast the largest image or text block renders on the webpage. You want to optimize for this core web vital by analyzing the things that negatively impact it, including:

• Server and/or software response times
• Webpage resources and bandwidth
• Browser software and plugins
• Site JavaScript and CSS code

2. First Input Delay (FID)

FID measures load responsiveness, which is how quickly a webpage loads and executes so that the user can interact with the page. For this, the primary cause of a bad FID score is heavy JavaScript execution. So you want to optimize how JavaScript parses, compiles and executes on your webpage. Note: Most webpages have no trouble passing the FID threshold, but check your scores to be sure.

3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS measures the formatting changes to a webpage after the initial rendering in a browser. In other words, it’s about the stability of a webpage. Think: a link or button moving on the page, causing a person to click something unexpected. To improve CLS:

1. Use size attributes for images, videos and other embedded items or iframes.
2. Never insert content dynamically above existing content.
3. If using CSS to animate elements, prefer “transform” animations.

4. Mobile-Friendliness

Creating mobile-friendliness means having a website that offers a good experience for visitors using a smartphone or tablet. Just some of the things to consider:

• Ensure the webpage fits different screen sizes.
• Configure the size of the text for mobile viewing.
• Make sure that it’s easy for mobile users to click buttons and links.
• Have fast-loading webpages.
• Use mobile-compatible plugins.

5. HTTPS

HTTPS, or hypertext transfer protocol secure, secures the data that’s exchanged between a web browser and a web server. It helps to protect your website and its visitors from potential bad actors. For any site that is not secure in this way, the next step is to migrate the site from HTTP to HTTPS.

6. No Intrusive Interstitials

Intrusive interstitials are webpage pop-ups that make it hard for a mobile user to access the content they want. These create a bad user experience for mobile users. There are several steps you can take to avoid intrusive interstitials, including:

• Use pop-up banners that don’t take a lot of space.
• Make sure users can easily dismiss the pop-up.
• Apply a delay before the pop-up renders.
• Segment your pop-ups by audience to make the message more relevant to them.
• If a user closes a pop-up once, make sure that it doesn’t continue to display or follow them around the website.
• Make sure your pop-up doesn’t slow your page load time.

For a deep dive into the page experience update, get our free e-book instantly.

Bruce Clay Inc. works with clients to move sites to “good.” Contact us if you cannot afford to lose in SEO.

FAQ: How does the Page Experience Update impact website rankings and what should CMOs be aware of?

Google’s Page Experience Update has become a pivotal factor influencing website rankings. This update reflects Google’s commitment to rewarding websites that prioritize user experience. It assesses various aspects of a website’s performance, ultimately impacting its position on search engine result pages (SERPs).

The Page Experience Update signifies a shift in how search engines evaluate websites. It encompasses several factors, including Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and HTTPS security. Core Web Vitals, namely Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measure user-centric metrics like page load speed, responsiveness, and visual stability.

For CMOs, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. This update underscores the significance of enhancing user experience as a part of an overarching marketing strategy. Websites that provide a seamless and engaging browsing experience tend to attract and retain users, leading to increased conversions and improved brand perception. CMOs should collaborate closely with their marketing and development teams to align strategies that prioritize user-centric enhancements.

One pivotal consideration is mobile-friendliness. With a growing number of users accessing websites via mobile devices, optimizing for a mobile experience is paramount. Google’s algorithms favor responsive design and easy navigation on small screens. Additionally, the transition to HTTPS has become essential. A secure website safeguards user data and signals credibility to both users and search engines.

Intrusive interstitials, such as pop-ups obstructing content, can hinder user experience. CMOs must ensure that any pop-ups on their website are user-friendly and non-intrusive. Engaging with web development teams to implement non-disruptive pop-up strategies can prevent penalties resulting from poor user experience.

As CMOs strategize for the future, adapting to the Page Experience Update is non-negotiable. Embracing a holistic approach that combines SEO, user experience, and content strategy is key. Regularly monitoring website performance metrics and using tools provided by Google can aid in identifying areas for improvement. By taking a proactive stance, CMOs can maximize their website’s potential and secure a strong online presence.

Step-by-Step Procedure: Navigating the Page Experience Update for CMOs

1. Understand the significance of the Page Experience Update in shaping website rankings.
2. Familiarize yourself with Core Web Vitals, including LCP, FID, and CLS.
3. Collaborate with your marketing and development teams to align strategies prioritizing user experience enhancements.
4. Optimize your website for mobile-friendliness to cater to users accessing your site on various devices.
5. Transition your website to HTTPS to ensure data security and enhance credibility.
6. Evaluate any intrusive interstitials on your website and work with your development team to make them user-friendly.
7. Monitor website performance metrics regularly using tools provided by Google.
8. Stay updated with industry trends, and algorithm changes to remain competitive.
9. Engage in ongoing communication with your team to implement user-centric improvements.
10. Consider seeking professional guidance from SEO experts to navigate the intricacies of the update.
11. Analyze your website’s user journey and identify areas for improvement.
12. Prioritize page load speed by optimizing images, scripts, and server responses.
13. Improve user engagement through well-designed layouts and minimal design disruptions.
14. Test your website’s responsiveness across various devices and browsers.
15. Use data-driven insights to make informed decisions about design changes.
16. Continuously monitor user feedback and adapt strategies accordingly.
17. Implement non-disruptive pop-up strategies to ensure a smooth browsing experience.
18. Encourage collaboration between marketing, development, and design teams for comprehensive improvements.
19. Track the impact of changes on website rankings and user engagement over time.
20. Embrace a proactive and adaptable approach to stay ahead of evolving search engine algorithms.

By following this step-by-step procedure, CMOs can effectively navigate the Page Experience Update and enhance their website’s performance and visibility in search results.

The post What CMOs Need to Know About Google’s Page Experience Ranking Update appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..

In particular, websites can qualify for a ranking boost based on several new performance metrics Google calls “core web vitals.”

Core web vitals are a set of core webpage functionalities that impact user experience. They now play a part in strategic SEO and can impact how websites rank in Google.

Google has defined three core web vitals:

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

This article is part of our series about Google’s page experience update, and I’m updating it to reflect Google’s latest changes. Here I’ll discuss cumulative layout shift or CLS:

• What is CLS?
• How do you measure CLS?
• How does CLS impact SEO?
• How do I improve my CLS score?
• FAQ: How can I improve my website’s user experience and SEO with Core Web Vitals?

What Is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)?

CLS measures the formatting changes to a webpage after the initial rendering in a browser, usually by the dynamic insertion of content above what is already being shown.

It is generally annoying to be clicking on a link and have that link “move,” resulting in a click to an unexpected location. This kind of instability of content on a webpage creates a bad user experience.

Google discusses CLS here:

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) is an important, user-centric metric for measuring visual stability because it helps quantify how often users experience unexpected layout shifts—a low CLS helps ensure that the page is delightful.

Unexpected page layout shifts hurt the user experience. One example is when a button or link shifts on the webpage, causing a person to click something else. This can be really bad if it means they accidentally made a purchase, as you can see in this demo from Google:

Importantly, Google clarifies that not all layout shifts are considered bad:

A layout shift is only bad if the user isn’t expecting it. On the other hand, layout shifts that occur in response to user interactions (clicking a link, pressing a button, typing in a search box and similar) are generally fine, as long as the shift occurs close enough to the interaction that the relationship is clear to the user.

Layout shifts that occur within 500 milliseconds of user input will have the hadRecentInput flag set so that they can be excluded from calculations.

How Is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Measured?

CLS is measured by the total of all individual layout shift scores for every unexpected layout shift that occurs during a pageview’s worst “session window.”

A session window is any 5-second span of shifts that occur while a user visits a page. Google looks for the 5-second interval that has the most shift penalties, and that’s the score for that pageview.

To calculate a layout shift score, Google multiplies the impact fraction and the distance fraction. I’ll break these down.

Impact fraction is how much viewport area an unstable element takes up between two frames.

In the example below, you can see that the element takes up 50% of the original viewport, but then is moved down by 25%. Between both frames, the element takes up 50% plus 25% of the viewport, causing the impact fraction to be 75%.

Example of layout shift between two frames, Google Developers

Distance fraction is the distance that an unstable element has moved. The example below shows that the element has moved 25% of the viewport height.

Example of distance shift in the viewport, Google Developers

So to sum up: CLS is measured by the layout shift score, which is calculated this way:

     Impact fraction * distance fraction = layout shift score

Taking the examples above, the calculation would go like so: 0.75 * 0.25 = 0.1875. Google says a webpage should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1 across all pages or page views on your site. This example would be over that goal, so it would score poorly.

One illustration to give you a clearer idea of how CLS is scored: If everything inside of the viewport shifted out of the viewport in a single frame, that would have a layout score of 1.0. (See other examples on GitHub.)

The more elements you have on your page that shift in the viewport, the worse your score could be.

Google’s CLS score target

You can read more about the layout shift score here and how Google defines its thresholds here.

How Does Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Impact SEO?

As with the other core web vitals, CLS helps ensure that the page experience is smooth for your visitors — on both mobile and desktop.

A good layout shift score can help ensure users don’t get frustrated with your webpage, don’t accidentally click and get taken to another page, and don’t mistakenly make a purchase. A good user experience helps you achieve all the outcomes we like to see in SEO: rankings, traffic, conversions and revenue.

According to Screaming Frog research, URLs in Position 1 of the search results were 10% more likely to pass the core web vitals assessment than URLs in Position 9. Of course, this data reflected existing pages — which might not have been fine-tuned to comply with core web vitals yet — before these factors applied to the ranking algorithms.

Looking at CLS, less than half (46%) of mobile URLs and less than half (47%) of desktop URLs had “good” CLS scores. The average CLS score was 0.29 on mobile and 0.25 on desktop. In other words, there is room for CLS improvement on most sites.

Screaming Frog segmented pass rates by position, and found a decline in the percentage of “good” URLs as you move down the positions on the search results page. The following example is mobile results, but they also graphed the data for desktop.

“How Many Sites Pass the Core Web Vitals Assessment?” screamingfrog.co.uk

How Do I Improve My Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Score?

Google offers lab tools and field tools to help you measure, then optimize your CLS score. For CLS, lab tools may not be as useful as the real data captured in the wild for your webpages.

Tools provided include:

• Chrome User Experience Report (field)
• PageSpeed Insights (lab and field)
• Search Console (Core Web Vitals report) (field)
• Chrome DevTools (lab)
• Lighthouse (lab)
• WebPageTest (lab)
• WaterFaller.dev (lab)

Another way to measure CLS uses the web-vitals JavaScript library. You can learn more about that here.

Common causes of layout shifts include:

• Images without dimensions
• Ads, video and other embedded objects or iframes without dimensions
• Dynamically injected content
• Late-loading CSS where styles are applied after other items have been loaded
• Web fonts causing flashes of invisible or unstyled text
• Elements on the page that wait for other items to be loaded over the network before appearing
• Animating elements by “height” and “width” instead of CSS’s “transform: scale()”
• Animating elements by “top”, “right”, “bottom” or “left” instead of CSS’s “transform: translate()”

Basic principles that will improve CLS include:

1. Always use size attributes for images, videos and other embedded items or iframes. If an element is dynamically loaded, use CSS to style any container elements to the same size or aspect ratio before the content is loaded. Then, when the content is loaded into those container elements, the page will not shift.
2. Never insert content dynamically above existing content.
3. If using CSS to animate elements, prefer “transform” animations.

And check out this video about CLS from Google Chrome Developers on YouTube:

Want more in-depth info? Watch our on-demand webinar 3 Expert Tips to Improve Core Web Vitals including the extended Q&A at the end.

Read our entire page experience series for more information on this ranking update:

1. What’s the Page Experience Update?
2. How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Site
3. Intrusive Interstitials & Why They’re Bad for SEO
4. HTTPS for Users and Ranking
5. Core Web Vitals Overview
6. Core Web Vitals: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
7. Core Web Vitals: FID (First Input Delay)
8. Core Web Vitals: CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

FAQ: How can I improve my website’s user experience and SEO with Core Web Vitals?

User experience and SEO have become the twin pillars of successful online ventures. Core Web Vitals, introduced by Google, guide websites toward better performance and visibility. These metrics, comprising Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), quantify crucial aspects of user experience.

LCP gauges loading speed, FID measures interactivity, and CLS evaluates visual stability. Improving these metrics not only ensures a seamless browsing experience but also holds the potential to influence search rankings positively. Users appreciate websites that load swiftly, respond promptly, and maintain visual consistency, ultimately leading to lower bounce rates and prolonged engagement.

To improve Core Web Vitals, consider optimizing your images and videos, leveraging browser caching, and employing content delivery networks (CDNs) for faster loading times. Minimize server response times by employing efficient hosting and coding practices. Moreover, prioritize the rendering of above-the-fold content to prevent layout shifts, enhancing both user satisfaction and SEO performance.

Focus on optimizing server and network performance, using browser caching effectively, and utilizing modern image formats to balance content richness and loading speed. Employ lazy loading for images and scripts to load resources only when users require them, contributing to faster initial page loading and a better overall user experience.

Finally, adopting a mobile-first design approach and leveraging responsive design principles are key strategies for improving Core Web Vitals. With a substantial portion of online traffic originating from mobile devices, catering to mobile users effectively can substantially enhance both user experience and search rankings.

Core Web Vitals offer a strategic advantage to website owners and digital marketers aiming to excel in user experience and SEO. By understanding and optimizing these metrics, websites can provide faster, more interactive, and visually stable experiences that resonate with users and search engines alike. Elevating Core Web Vitals creates a win-win scenario, bolstering website performance and driving organic traffic.

Step-by-Step Procedure to Improve User Experience and SEO with Core Web Vitals:

1. Assess Current Metrics: Analyze your website’s existing Core Web Vitals metrics using tools like PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console.
2. Prioritize Key Metrics: Identify the metric (LCP, FID, or CLS) that requires the most improvement based on your analysis.
3. Optimize Images and Videos: Compress images and use modern formats to reduce file sizes without compromising quality. Consider lazy loading for images and videos.
4. Leverage Browser Caching: Configure your server to set appropriate resource caching headers, reducing loading times for returning visitors.
5. Utilize CDNs: Implement a content delivery network (CDN) to distribute resources across multiple servers, enhancing loading speed.
6. Optimize Server Response Times: Opt for reliable hosting providers with fast server response times. Minimize server-side processing delays.
7. Responsive Design: Ensure your website is responsive and provides a seamless experience across various screen sizes and devices.
8. Mobile-First Approach: Prioritize mobile users by designing your website with a mobile-first mindset.
9. Efficient Coding: Optimize your code by minimizing unnecessary scripts and stylesheets. Use browser caching for code files.
10. Minimize Third-Party Scripts: Limit the use of third-party scripts that might impact page loading and interactivity.
11. Critical Rendering Path: Prioritize rendering of above-the-fold content to prevent layout shifts during page loading.
12. Reduce Server Requests: Minimize the number of server requests by combining CSS and JavaScript files when possible.
13. Content Delivery Networks: Utilize CDNs to distribute content across various servers, reducing latency and improving loading speed.
14. Eliminate Render-Blocking Resources: Identify and eliminate resources that prevent the initial rendering of the page.
15. Implement Lazy Loading: Use lazy loading to load images and resources only when users scroll to them, improving initial page loading.
16. Use Responsive Images: Employ responsive images that adapt to the user’s device and screen size, optimizing visual appeal and loading speed.
17. Continuous Monitoring: Regularly monitor and analyze your website’s Core Web Vitals metrics, making necessary adjustments.
18. Regular Updates: Keep your website and its components updated to benefit from performance enhancements.
19. Testing and Iteration: Test different strategies and continually iterate to find the optimal combination for improving Core Web Vitals.
20. Measure and Adjust: Monitor your optimizations’ impact on user experience and SEO rankings. Adjust your strategies based on results.

The post Core Web Vitals: Cumulative Layout Shift – What It Is and How to Improve It for SEO appeared first on Bruce Clay, Inc..