Google Shopping campaigns are a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses looking to reach new customers and drive sales. By advertising using Google Shopping, eCommerce stores can showcase products with their images and image details.
However, one caveat, is unlike Google Search there are no keywords for advertisers to control when you want your Google Shopping ads appear. Instead, Google matches user searches with keywords found in the advertiser’s product title, product description and different product attributes within your data feed.
Therefore, for an advertiser to ensure that a campaign is effective, it’s important to carefully manage your targeting and avoid wasting ad spend on irrelevant searches. One way to do this is by using negative keywords in your Standard Shopping campaign.
What are Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords are terms or phrases that you specify in your campaign to exclude your product listings from appearing in search results for those specific terms. For example, if you sell women’s shoes, you might add “men’s” as a negative keyword to prevent your product listings from appearing in search results for men’s shoes.
Why Use Negative Keywords in Your Standard Shopping Campaign?
Negative keywords play a critical role in optimizing your Standard Shopping campaign by helping you focus your targeting and prevent your product listings from appearing for irrelevant searches. By excluding irrelevant searches, you can:
Improve the relevance of your product listings: By excluding irrelevant searches, you can ensure that your product listings are shown to customers who are more likely to be interested in your products. This helps to improve the relevance of your product listings and increase the likelihood of clicks and conversions.
Reduce wasted ad spend: By excluding irrelevant searches, you can reduce the number of impressions and clicks that your product listings receive from customers who are unlikely to make a purchase. This helps to reduce your ad spend and improve your return on investment (ROI).
Improve the user experience: By excluding irrelevant searches, you can improve the user experience for your target audience by showing them more relevant product listings. This can help to increase engagement and build brand trust.
How to Add Negative Keywords to Your Standard Shopping Campaign
Adding negative keywords to your Standard Shopping campaign is easy and can be done in a few simple steps:
Log in to your Google Ads account.
Click on the “Campaigns” tab.
Select the Standard Shopping campaign you want to modify.
Click on the “Settings” tab.
Scroll down to the “Keywords” section and click on “Negative keywords.”
Click on the “+ Negative keyword” button to add a new negative keyword.
Enter the keyword or phrase you want to exclude, and then click “Save.”
It’s a good idea to regularly review your negative keyword list and make any necessary updates to ensure your Standard Shopping campaign is optimized for the most relevant searches.
Tips for Choosing Effective Negative Keywords
To get the most out of your negative keyword strategy, it’s important to choose effective negative keywords that accurately reflect the searches you want to exclude. Here are some tips to help you choose effective negative keywords:
Use broad match: By using broad match, you can exclude a wide range of searches that include your negative keyword. For example, if you add “men’s” as a negative keyword, your product listings will not appear in search results for “men’s shoes,” “men’s clothing,” etc.
Look at your search terms report: Your search terms report shows you the exact terms that people are using to search for your products. By reviewing this report, you can identify irrelevant searches that you want to exclude using negative keywords.
Use common misspellings and synonyms: Make sure to include common misspellings and synonyms of your negative keywords to ensure that you are excluding a wide range of irrelevant searches.
Avoid using too many negative keywords: While negative keywords are an important tool for optimizing your Standard Shopping campaign, it’s important to not overuse or you will block keyword searches that could drive wanted traffic.
What If You Are Running Smart Shopping Campaigns?
Smart Shopping campaigns use machine learning algorithms to dynamically determine the best keywords and placements for your product ads. As a result, it’s not possible to see the exact keywords that trigger each ad, but you can use the metrics in the keywords tab to understand how your ads are performing and make informed optimizations.
However, you can still add your basic negative keyword list. If I have tested and found that Smart Shopping campaigns outperform manual campaigns, then I’ll add a list that includes my “Who Done It” list … why, how, who, can I etc.
In addition, there are likely words that you will know from reviewing search campaigns that will block unwanted traffic such as free, cheap, used, etc.
Adding negative keywords to Google Smart Shopping campaigns, you can follow these steps:
Log in to your Google Ads account.
Click on the “Campaigns” tab.
Select the Smart Shopping campaign you want to modify.
Click on the “Settings” tab.
Scroll down to the “Keywords” section and click on “Negative keywords.”
Click on the “+ Negative keyword” button to add a new negative keyword.
Enter the keyword or phrase you want to exclude, and then click “Save.”
Final WORD
Adding negative keywords to your Google Shopping campaigns is a crucial step in optimizing your campaign and driving sales. The ability to view the search terms is one of the reasons that manual shopping campaigns will many times outperform the “smart” shopping campaigns even with their “machine learning”.
To get the most out of this negative keyword strategy, you will need to regularly take the following actions:
Log into your Google Ads account and select the Standard Shopping campaign to modify.
Scroll down to the “Keywords” section and click on “Negative keywords.”
Add the keywords or phrases you want to exclude and save.
Regularly review your negative keyword list and make updates as needed.
Remember to use broad match where it makes sense. Review your search terms report, include common misspellings and synonyms, and avoid overusing negative keywords when choosing effective negative keywords.
By following these steps and using negative keywords effectively, you will improve the relevance of your product listings, reduce waste ad spend, and increase conversions for your business.
He has been called the foremost expert in eCommerce Marketing Growth Strategies. He was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit www.trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
Guess what one of the biggest mistake Shopify owners make advertising their products using Google Shopping?
It is thinking that using Shopify’s free Google channel will have your products correctly running on Google Shopping and the orders will start to flow in.
Shopify, instructs you to open the proper Google accounts: Google Merchant Center and then Google Ads account if you want to run paid traffic. Then, Shopify instructs to connect those accounts to your products in Shopify. Many Shopify store owners think by clicking a couple of buttons, like magic your products will start to list and orders will start to come pouring in.
However, I’m telling you today that magic rarely exists and clicking that Google channel checkbox or two is not going to grow your sales at least not efficiently and I’ll tell you why.
First, with the free traffic.
It is true you can generate some free traffic through Google Shopping just by opening a GMC and linking your products. But for most, the free traffic is going to be a mere trickle.
The free traffic you will receive will range from 1 to 2 clicks per day to 1 to 2 per month depending on what you are selling!
Furthermore, the Google channel in Shopify does not let you adjust the different fields that Google uses to filter, sort and list your products.
You could use a supplemental feed inside Google Shopping to enhance your listing, but if are using Shopify’s Google channel to submit your products there is a good chance you have no idea what a supplemental feed even is.
Second, with paid traffic.
If you go on and also open a Google ads account and add some advertising budget, what Shopify will have you using for simplicity’s sake is a Google Smart Shopping campaign. For “smart” shopping campaigns and yes, I’m doing air quotes around smart, you have no idea of where you are advertising, at what bid or for what keyword. In addition, if you are submitting all products you would need to do some deep discovery to find out even for what product.
The only thing actually smart about a Google Smart Shopping campaign is the way Google has configured it to easily accept money from more well-intentioned, yet novice advertisers.
It is a fact that Google Shopping has many moving parts, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. I recently released a course designed to explain the entire process called Understand, Conquer and Profit Using Google Shopping.
This course is a free course within Google Shopping University, and it will clarify the entire process of using Google Shopping.
Click on the link below to signup and in under an hour you will know more about advertising using Google Shopping than 90% of Shopify merchants including probably your competitors!
You don’t need to be an expert, you don’t even need to run the advertising yourself, but you should absolutely know how Google Shopping works and that is why I created this course.
Click on the link below to read all the details and get started today.
He was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit www.trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
Here is an expert tip on a fairly simple way to save some money on your Google Paid Ads.
How much ad spend you are going to reduce will depend on how much you are currently spending and how many negative keywords you currently are using, but I can tell you that it could be around 3-5% of your ads budget.
For you to save money on unnecessary ad spend what you should do is add what I call the ‘Who Done It’ list of negative keywords to your campaigns.
What is the ‘Who Done It’ list of negative keywords?
This is a list of negative keywords that block question searches from triggering your ads to show. Effectively blocking question searches in both shopping campaigns and search campaigns that utilize either phrase or broad match, this list will eliminate high level searches that rarely if ever directly lead to a sale.
What are these keywords and why do they never or at least very rarely lead to a sale?
Here are some of the words. Read through the list below and think what type of keyword searches these would generate for your campaigns then we will look at examples for one of my private clients:
‘where’
‘how to’
‘how do’ / ‘how you’
‘could I’ / ‘could you’
‘can I’ / ‘can you’
‘should I’ / ‘should you’
‘does a’ / ‘is a’
Why does this list of ‘Who Done It’ keywords rarely if ever lead to a conversion?
Because these keywords are going to generate very high level / low buying intent traffic.
As you read through the list you probably filled in the rest of the question in your head as it comes to your campaigns so perhaps you already know what I mean, but let’s look at some examples:
A private client of mine sells shower drain covers and not the $5 variety from Home Depot, but rather super high-end drain covers starting at about $60.
For his company, he wants traffic from keywords from people searching to replace or install a new drain cover.
Here are some of the searches that contain ‘shower drain’ that adding the ‘Who Done It’ list will block.
‘Where are the screws to uninstall a shower drain?’
‘Hot to install a shower drain?’
‘How do I clean my shower drain?’
‘Could I make my own shower drain cover?’
‘Can I replace my shower drain cover myself?’
‘Should I cover the drain in my basement?’
‘Does a shower drain block water?’
You see the pattern, right?
The pattern is that none of these searches have a very high likelihood of leading to a sale.
Sure, you could serve visitors retargeting ads after they visit your website, but still, it is a longshot. Better to save the money on what it would cost to bring these looky-loos to your website and apply the ads budget you save to traffic with a higher likelihood of converting.
Creating Your Custom List of ‘Who Done It’ Negative Keywords
Besides taking the list of examples above, you may want to know how to customize the list for your account.
The most effective way to find your own ‘Who Done It’ list is by reviewing the terms that have historically driven traffic to your ad campaigns.
If you have been following my writings, you are aware that Google has partially hidden this data within your Google Ads account. However, it is still currently available using Google Analytics. Here is an article that goes into details – Google is Now Playing Hide and Seek with Your Search Terms
Fully detailed in the article mentioned above, here are the steps to access your full list of search terms using Google Analytics Search Queries Report.
Change the date in the upper right to dates you wish to view.
Using the Secondary dimension drop down to add ‘Campaign’. Note, without this step you will be viewing keywords from the entire account.
Change rows to a number that will display all data (default is only 25 rows).
Export data.
Applying Your List of Negative Keywords
One you have your own list of ‘Who Done It’ negative keywords the next step is to add it to your account.
When adding negative keywords, you have 3 choices:
Add them at the ad group level.
Add them at the campaign level
Add them at the account level.
Here we are only going to review adding them to the account level because in my opinion there is no reason to have ‘Who Done It’ traffic in any campaign or ad group.
To quickly add these negative keywords to multiple campaigns, I recommend using a negative keyword list. A negative keyword list will easily let you add or subtract keywords to the ‘Who Done It’ list and quickly apply the list to multiple campaigns.
Here is how to create an implement a negative keyword list.
Create a negative keyword list:
In the top menu, under Shared Library, click ‘Negative Keyword List’
Click the blue plus button.
Name your list and add negative keywords.
Click Save
Apply negative keyword lists to multiple campaigns from the negative keyword library
Click the tools & settings icon Google Ads (in the upper right tool bar) of your account.
Under “Shared library,” click Negative keyword lists.
Check the box next to the negative keyword lists you want to apply to campaigns.
Click Apply to campaigns.
Select the campaigns you’d like to apply the negative keyword lists to.
Click Apply.
FINAL WORD
Blocking searches using the ‘Who Done It’ list of negative keywords only works when using manual shopping campaigns. With smart shopping campaigns, you can’t block unwanted keyword searches and you won’t even be able to tell how many ‘Who Done It’ searches you are receiving. Yet just another reason to avoid Smart Shopping campaigns.
Adding the ‘Who Done It’ list of negative keywords is going to effectively block the higher purchase intent traffic or the traffic which is the furthest away from making a purchase.
In the image above, the ‘Who Done It’ list is going to block the awareness to interest group. Typically, those website visitors are a long way from purchasing and not profitable to serve Google paid ads.
Ideally when we are looking to drive traffic from Google at a minimum, we want traffic in the intent to evaluation stage or those looking to make a purchase.
Adding the ‘Who Done It’ list of negative keywords is one way to effectively ensure we are getting this qualified, purchase intent traffic to our Google Shopping and Search campaigns.
He was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit www.trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
Last year Google introduced their Google Campaign Optimization Score.
This score measures how well each Google Ads campaign is rated based on Google’s preferred standards. Rated between 0% and 100%, this score looks like a cut and dry number to measure how well your account is optimized.
Optimization score is displayed on all active Search, Shopping, Display and Video Auction campaigns. A 100% score translates into your campaigns being fully optimized in accordance with Google’s best-practices with scores lower than a 100% meaning Google has other recommendations for your campaigns.
However, it is important to realize that your goals as an advertiser may not (and many times do not) align with Google. When it comes to preferred standards and your campaign’s score it is important to keep in mind that the Campaign Optimization Score is based solely on Google’s goals.
What do I mean?
You will see some examples below, but I like to think of it this way.
Google’s goal is to get as much money from its advertisers as possible while providing a viable marketing network for its advertisers and a good experience for its users.
Our goal as advertisers is or at least should be to optimize our advertising spend based on our own goals. Those goals could be sales and revenue, which is typical for eCommerce advertisers or traffic aka awareness (not as typical). Regardless of the goal, we should work to optimize our ad spend to maximize the value of our goals.
Now, if you are like me, you will find that nothing is more irritating in your account than seeing a low score. If you are an agency, it also can be disastrous if a client is in their account and sees their optimization score is low.
Fortunately, you do not need to accept all of Google’s recommendations to improve a campaign’s optimization score.
Ignoring specific recommendations will give your campaigns the full credit for that recommendation, but you first must login to each recommendation and manually review.
How Do You View Your Google Optimization Score?
Login to your Google Ads Account.
Click on Recommendations in the left side navigation menu.
You can then filter your recommendations into specific categories by clicking on the category name.
You can then Apply recommendations, View Recommendations or Dismiss recommendations. To dismiss you will need to first click on the 3 vertical dots.
You can also view your Optimization Score for individual campaigns. Click on the Campaigns button in the left navigation menu. The Optimization Score is shown by default. You can turn on/off the column. Therefore, if you don’t see it click on the columns button and turn it on. The field is listed under ‘Recommended columns’.
Reviewing Google’s Recommendations
Beyond improving your score there are obvious benefits to reviewing your Google Optimization Score.
First, consistently reviewing recommendations may alert you of new features within Google Ads, soon after they are released. This is how I was first alerted to Image Extensions, which have been fantastic on improving Search campaigns’ click through rates.
There is also a lot of what I consider non-sense recommendations, such as giving 24.6% improvement for changing to Smart Shopping (see image below) or high percentage increase for automated bidding within Search campaigns.
If you have read my Make Each Click Using Google Shopping book, you probably know how I feel about Smart Shopping, but here is a quick synopsis of why it may not be a good idea to trust Google with your Shopping campaigns.
Another recommendation favorite is adding or improving responsive search ads. Which, I mostly agree with although like anything else in Google I highly recommend testing.
Below is a list of categories and common recommendations that I see and the actions that I usually take with each:
Bidding & Budgets:
Raise your budgets (Usually Review and Accept)
Move unused budgets (Usually Dismiss)
Raise your budgets for upcoming traffic increases (Usually Dismiss)
Bid more efficiently with Maximize conversions using a target CPA (Always Dismiss)
Keywords & Targeting:
Upgrade your existing keywords to broad match (Usually Dismiss)
Create Dynamic Search Ads (Will typically dismiss)
Add audiences for reporting (Usually Review and Accept)
Use Display Expansion (Always Dismiss)
Add new keywords (Will review suggestions)
Remove redundant keywords (Usually Review and Accept)
Automated Campaigns:
Switch To Smart Shopping (Always Dismiss)
Ads & Extensions:
Add image extensions to your ads (Always Accept)
Add responsive search ads (Usually Review and Accept)
Improve your responsive search ads (Usually Review and Accept)
Add price extensions to your ads (Usually Review and Accept)
Repairs:
Make sure your automated bid strategy can optimize your bids by fixing your conversion tracking. (Deserves attention).
FINAL WORD
For the most part, I believe that the recommendations that Google provides are a helpful feature for advertisers.
Although seeing a low score may be irritating especially when it is driven by recommendations that would most likely hurt performance, it does work to drive action. In order to improve your Google Campaign Optimization score you need to review and either accept or more likely dismiss each recommendation.
And even through, I personally ignore and dismiss the majority of Google’s best-practices for my private clients’ accounts that I manage this is because of the systems in place of how my agency generates the best results.
Those with less experience managing Google or who want to spend less time optimizing or become more ‘hands off’ may accept more of the recommendations than I do and may even activate the dreaded Smart Shopping campaigns:<.
However, like almost everything else in Google, it comes down to testing to see what will give you the best results in your Google advertising and the recommendations are a great way to alert you of what is available within Google Ads that you may not be using.
He was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List in both 2020 and 2021. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit www.trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
Google Shopping ads over the last few years have outperformed Google Search Ads in terms of profitability for the majority of my private clients.
Like many of you may have done, most of my private clients have opted out of advertising using Google Search campaigns.
The only exception where Search campaigns are still widely used across verticals is with a branded Search campaign. Note, a branded campaign is where you bid on your company name and close variants.
However, this might all soon change.
Google has begun to roll out a new ad extension that has significantly increased CTR (click through rates) and conversion rates. With this new Google ad extension, I have been seeing the potential to again make Search ads more viable for many of my private clients.
What is the extension?
They are image extensions.
While still in BETA and not currently available in all accounts, within the accounts that I have activated I have seen a significant increase in click through rates and conversion rates worth getting excited about!
Why is this?
One of the reasons that Google Shopping ads work so well is because users know what to expect before clicking on the product ad. Being able to see the product image along with the product title and price gives an accurate picture of what a user can expect BEFORE they click on an ad.
With Google Search Ads, even with the most clearly written ad there could be room for confusion on what they expect in terms of the user.
This confusion leads to high bounce rates thus lowering quality score thus lowering your ad rank and yes increasing the cost per click that Google charges.
However, by being able to show a related image along within the Search ad, much of this possible confusion is now removed.
In addition, image extensions are eye catching and help ads stand out from competitors who have not yet implemented these extensions with their Search ads.
Who can run ads and what are the requirements?
In order to be eligible for image extensions, accounts need to have the following:
Have a good history of policy compliance.
Ads accounts need to be within an eligible vertical. Sensitive verticals such as sexual content, gambling and alcohol are not allowed.
Accounts must be open at least 90 days.
Image extensions use two ratios:
Square (1×1) minimum size 300 x 300 pixels; recommended size 1200 x 1200 pixels.
Rectangle (1.91×1) minimum size 600 x 314 pixels; recommended size 1200 x 628 pixels.
Note, square images are required while rectangle are optional.
Google recommends as best-practices for advertisers to upload 3 of each size for every account they wish to have images used with the total images allowed being 20 images for each ad group.
Note, just like Shopping ads, watermarks, logos and other promotional overlays are prohibited within images.
Google performs quality and policy checks before approving image extension so you should make sure your images are compliant with the above policies.
Instructions to Create Image Extensions:
Sign into your Google Ads Account.
In the left menu, select Ads & Extensions, then Extensions.
Click the blue plus button and select Image Extensions.
Select a campaign or ad group where you would like to add the new extension.
Select the blue plus next to images and select image source you wish to access to add your image.
You have the option to add new images or add existing images to your campaign. For new images, you can upload images or have Google scan your website or social channels for existing images.
If images don’t meet specifications, you will have the option to crop images.
Upload at least 1 square image. Recommended to upload 3 images with maximum of 20.
You can preview your image by clicking on the pencil icon. Once you are satisfied, click Save and images will be submitted for approval.
Image Extensions – How They Appear
Here is an example of a live image extension as it appears on this mobile device.
Notice how an image appears next to the ad description below the ad headline and above site extensions?
Note how prominent it makes the ad appear?
What do you think this is going to do for the click through rates?
FINAL WORD
Start using image extensions!
It is rare that I can recommend a new rollout from Google Ads to be used across all verticals, but with image extensions I am comfortable doing just that.
I have not found any examples where using image extensions underperforms not using them. Plus, image extensions do not cost anything more to include on your ads and in fact by increasing your quality score they likely will lower your CPC.
One strategy that has worked well for me is reviewing which keywords are currently converting in your Google Shopping campaigns and using this list to create a new Search campaign.
By using a list of keywords along with the image for items that are already converting and directing them to a category page where users can shop for the item, you will immediately have double coverage using both Shopping and Search ads.
Regardless of the strategy you decide to apply, make sure you are using relevant images that add to the customer experience and begin to test results with your own account!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Splichal is the founder and managing partner of True Online Presence, author of the Make Each Click Count book series, host of the Make Each Click Count podcast, founder of Make Each Click Count University and certified online marketing strategist with twenty plus years of experience helping companies increase their online presence and profitable revenues. In 2020, he was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit www.trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
A hot topic going around right now is ‘website experience ‘or specifically good individual page experiences.
But what is a good page experience and how can you measure how good of a page experience your website currently provides to its users?
A good page experience (at least defined by Google) revolves around page speed (how quickly pages load) and website responsiveness.
Now that we have defined the ‘experience’, you may be wondering if a ‘good page experience’ is just a fad or a buzz word from industry professionals or whether is it actually important to consider?
The answer is both. Providing a good ‘website experience’ is a trending subject discussed in length right now, but for good reason.
Some of the ‘good experiences elements have already been best-practices for some time. Having a mobile friendly website, that provides safe, secure browsing free of popup ads has been helping site become Google compliant.
What’s Changing?
Google recently announced a gradual rollout that is set to begin June 2021 that will take into account other page experience elements when determining how they organically rank pages.
The good news is Google is providing the tools you need to know to optimize for these changes before they happen.
In May 2021, the Google Chrome team announced a CORE WEB VITALS, a set of metrics related to speed, responsiveness and visual stability that help business owners determine the page experience they are providing their users.
There is a lot of technical jargon there, so let’s look to simplify it a bit.
Google’s CORE WEB VITALS is how Google will judge the level of experience that a website provides to its users. Although, these metrics are subject to change, for now they consist of the following three elements.
Loading – How fast your website loads.
Interactivity – How fast your users are able to interact with your website.
Visual Stability – How elements shift during loading on your page.
In order for a website to achieve an overall good score, Google has added a benchmark of being within the top 75 percentile for all three metrics.
These three metrics are filled with developer jargon that can be perhaps difficult for most store owners to fully comprehend.
Therefore, to add clarification to the upcoming update, we will look at each in layman terms.
Page Loading
Probably the easiest of the three metrics to measure and to fully understand, this metric measures how fast does your website loads.
Measured in LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). This is a metric that identifies the time it takes to render the largest image or text block that is visible when a page first loads.
In order to be within the top 75%, websites should load their LCP in 2.5 seconds or less.
Google provides a number of tools to be able to measure both page speed and LCP.
Page interactivity is measured in a unit called FID (First Input Delay).
FID measures the time from when a user first interacts with your website page (click a button, click a link, etc) to the time your website is able to process the event.
We’ve all clicked a button on a website (especially a complete purchase button) and experienced a long delay. This is Page Interactivity.
Although, not referring specifically to the order button, the delay can also take place within the website as users navigate and it is a slow to respond link or navigation element that does not provide a good customer experience.
In order to provide a good user experience, a website should have a FID of 100 milliseconds or less.
The tools to measure Page Interactivity are the same as measuring Page Load Speeds:
Visual Stability the third metric is measured with a unit called CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
To provide a good CLS, a page should maintain a CLS of 0.1 or less.
What exactly is a Cumulative Layout Shift?
Have you ever started reading text on a page when it first loads and all of a sudden it shifts? Or even worse, you are clicking on a link or button and all of a sudden it moves?
These movements typically happen as page resources are loaded independently or asynchronously.
Whatever, it is called it is not a good experience for the user.
Measuring CLS allows a measurement of how often these ‘shifts’ are occurring for real users.
CLS measures how quickly elements move and how much they move on the page during loading.
The formula Google uses is: layout shift score = impact fraction * distance fraction
Here are the principles that Google has provided to improve your CLS score:
Always include size attributes on your images and video elements, or otherwise reserve the required space with something like CSS aspect ratio boxes. This approach ensures that the browser can allocate the correct amount of space in the document while the image is loading. Note that you can also use the unsized-media feature policy to force this behavior in browsers that support feature policies.
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. Animate transitions in a way that provides context and continuity from state to state.
FINAL WORD
Providing a ‘good page experience’ has just gotten more complicated. The good news is that unlike other algorithm updates, Google has given us advance warning on this update and the tools to test and change our website.
How much will this algorithm change affect organic rankings?
That has yet to be determined, but keep in mind that updating your website to be in the top 75 percentile of the new CORE WEB VITAL metrics will not only help your organic (SEO) rankings, but also help to improve your customer experience and most likely your conversion rates.
Do yourself a favor and take the time to take a closer look at your website’s user experience and use the tools to adjust your website sooner rather than later.
If you are looking for more help or direction in fixing your issues, click here and schedule a complimentary discovery call to discuss possible solutions to improve your website experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Splichal is the founder and managing partner of True Online Presence, author of the Make Each Click Count book series, host of the Make Each Click Count podcast, founder of Make Each Click Count University and certified online marketing strategist with twenty plus years of experience helping companies increase their online presence and profitable revenues. In 2020, he was named to Best of Los Angeles Awards’ Most Fascinating 100 List. To find more information on Andy Splichal, visit www.trueonlinepresence.com or read The Full Story on his website or his blog, blog.trueonlinepresence.com.
