CLS issues reported in Google Search Console
Hi team,
My site traffic dropped significantly recently. So I checked in Google Search Console if there was anything affecting the SEO.
In the Core Web Vitals section, almost all my website pages were flagged as 'CLS issue: more than 0.1 (desktop)'
When I tested the page loading, I realized that the main content (including the page title) gets loaded right at the top of the page, before the site logo and menu are shown. After a split second, the logo and menu get displayed and the entire content that was loaded earlier, gets pushed down.
Here's a sample page.
There are some pages with CLS issues shown for mobile too, but their number is nowhere close to the desktop numbers.
Any help would be appreciated.
Comments
Hello,
Do you use any SEO plugin?
If yes, can you tell me the name of it, please?
Also, is your Betheme up to date?
Best regards
I'm using Yoast SEO plugin (version 16.6.1). The Betheme version is 21.7.8
Please, update YOAST and Betheme to the newest versions, and check if it helps.
You can also try to use some preloader plugin, so the content will be displayed only when fully loaded.
Thanks
We updated Yoast only a few days back. But it didn't fix it.
We've made several customizations on Betheme to reduce the code bloat that slows down the loading time. Which is one of the reasons, we update it infrequently.
While the theme is fantastic, it can become unwieldy for teams that don't need all the advanced features to keep updating it regularly.
If there isn't a quick fix to the issue, can you recommend if there's a lightweight version of this theme (or any other within the muffingroup portfolio) that I can buy?
If there's none, which preloader plugin would you recommend that's compatible with Betheme?
Well, the version you are using is really old.
With the 23.0 version, we provided completely rebuilded Theme Options and the Muffin Builder, the 24 version provided the live builder.
I know, that it's not the answer for your question, but from the version you are using, a lot of changes appeared and I think, that updating will solve the problem.
The modifications of the theme can be the source of the problem, because anyone did not complain about not proper CLS, let see one of our pre-built websites:
Also, I tested some of your pages and they are in correct CLS (even on mobile), so can you send me pages which are issued, or explain, when does the CLS is above the proper value?
If you are worried about updating the theme, let do it on your staging website, what I mean is duplicate your site and update the theme in the safe place (like subdomain, because you will be able to use the same license key, without breaking any license rules)
For duplicating, we strongly suggest to use the Duplicator plugin:
Sadly, we do not support any of the pre-loading plugins, so we cannot recommend any.
thanks
Here's what Core Web Vitals report shows.
I tried testing individual pages in PageSpeed.
The Lab data appears within limits, but the Field data is creating the problem.
For the CLS issue which I mentioned about in the first message, PageSpeed suggests setting dimensions for the logo and other images.
Is there a way to set the height and width in Betheme for .png files?
1) The logo problem is still in progress, I mean we are trying to solve that but we cannot exactly tell when it will be done.
We cannot just provide the height and width to that element, because it could issue a lot of staging websites, so sorry about that.
It surely will be fixed soon.
2) I tested it on pagespeed insights, and indeed, the CLS is too high on your website, but on our demos the problem does not appear.
Can you make a test with the updated theme on the subdomain? I think that it could be caused because of your modifications and old theme, because the latest betheme is lighter than the old one.
Thanks
Google recently released a core algorithm change in June, which gives a higher priority to LCP and CLS as a ranking factor. This may be the reason why the traffic has been hit in June.
Interestingly the demo site you shared has similarities with my site.
It has a fairly high LCP. And Pagespeed also says it does not pass Core Web Vitals. If it had been a live site with organic traffic, I'm guessing it would've seen a drop in traffic too. This might be worth exploring further by your development team.
I've highlighted the numbers on Pagespeed and WebpageTest.
Coming back to the main topic.
My site is fairly fragile and I don't have a technical person to help with this. So I'm quite paranoid about adding a subdomain and testing out the new version. From a licensing perspective, is it fine to test it out on another temporary test site and then delete the theme?
I'd like to be fairly certain that the fix works before I make any changes to my primary site.
You won't lose anything from your main site if you will move it to the subdomain, they will be two different instantions of wordpress.
Of course, You can test it out on other temporary test site, but if you want to use the same license key, then you will have to do that on your subdomain, because single license key can be used on single domain only.
About the vitals, our theme is made according to best practices (including Google guidelines), but any WordPress theme can not be fully prepared according to Google PageSpeed Insights(and similar tools) because their guidelines are ridiculous.
I'll pass the informations to the developer about the recent changes in google, we will check, what we can do to make our theme even better in these results - but, to notice these changes on your website, you will have to update your theme.
Thanks
I've read that article and I agree that their guidelines can seem impractical for most sites.
But if they include those factors in their ranking algorithm, flag 1000s of pages as 'Needs improvement' in the Google Search Console, and penalize users who ignore their warning - there's no other option but to follow them.
Let me figure out how I can do the testing with the latest Betheme version.
If you hear back from the development team on the LCP issue and its impact, please share their opinion on this thread so others following this discussion may also benefit from it.
Thank you Pablo, for your prompt responses!
Well, if you do not know how to create a subdomain, you should contact your hosting provider, because admin panel settings are different per hosting provider.
About the WP + BeTheme, if you want to make a clean installation, please follow the video tutorial below:
But, if you want to clone your website, please use this plugin on your actual website, to make a copy (it's like a backup)
Then, please follow instructions from this page, it will guide you how to do that:
thanks