Page Speed: How it impacts your SEO & improve your Google Rankings‎

Why Page Speed Matters and Ways to Improve It!

Page speed is defined as the length of time it takes to display all the content on a specific page or the length of time it takes for a browser to receive a web server’s first byte. Though similar, page speed is not the same as site speed. Site speed is the average of several sample pages on a website.

Got 10 seconds? Probably. But I bet you won’t spend it waiting for a web page to spin, sputter and load. I hate that. You hate that. And search engines hate that, too. But if your site is lightning fast, everyone will love you.

Page speed is important to users because, well, faster pages are more efficient. Per a recent Kissmetrics infographic, if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, over a quarter of users will click away. Mobile users expect speed, too. In the same survey, 73% of users reported visiting a website that loaded too slow. Page speed also affects conversion rate. For example, Walmart.com noted that with every second of increased page speed, they saw a two percent increase in conversion.

Google uses a multitude of factors to determine how to rank search engine results. Typically, these factors are either related to the content of a webpage itself (the text, its URL, the titles and headers, etc.) or were measurements of the authenticity of the website itself (age of the domain name, number and quality of inbound links, etc.). In 2010, Google announced that page speed would impact your website ranking. It actually refers to the time a visitor have to wait until your page is completely loaded. On average, a page load for e-commerce website takes 7 seconds meanwhile the ideal load time is around 3 seconds or less.

As a matter of facts, it has an impact on your audience user experience. A bad UX can cost you a loss of revenue if your target have to wait too long to get what they are looking for. They will just close your website. And above all, a slow page load is penalized by the search engines and has an impact on your ranking, both on mobile and desktop devices. Google says:

“A search result for a resource having a short load time relative to resources having longer load times can be promoted in a presentation order, and search results for the resources having longer load times can be demoted.”

Actually, Google compares your site to your competitors on a specific segment and attributes a bonus point whether you are the fastest. But be careful, that marks is not given unilaterally : it takes in account the country, device or network.

So, there is a few factors you should focus on to improve your page speed.

What can lower your page speed?

• Your host: you get what you paid. In the long run, a cheap offer can damage your page speed. Pick the right host that fit to your business size.
• Too large images: images which are too heavy to load can really lower your page speed. It is often due to extra data included in the comments or to a lack of compression. Prefer PNG for images that do not require high details like logos and JPEG for photos.
• External embedded media: external media like videos are highly valuable but can largely lower you load time. To gain some load time, host the videos on your own server.
• Unoptimized browser, plugins and app: you should test your website on all browsers since they do not load your site in the same way. Moreover, apps like Flash can seriously lower your page speed.
• Too much ads: more than just bothering your visitors, lots of ads have the drawback to slow down your page speed.
• Your theme: some highly designed themes containing a lot of effects can penalized your load page.
• Widgets: some social buttons or comment areas can have an impact of your page speed.
• Double-barreled code: if your HTML/CSS is not efficient or too dense, it will lower your page speed.

While page speed is important to Google and for your rankings, it does also impact your user experience. And it is not a secret that a positive user experience often leads to better conversions.

A fast website creates a good user experience in many different ways:

• if you sell a product, having fast pages will help your visitors quickly understand what you have to offer and complete your order forms.
• if you generate revenues thanks to advertising on your content, a fast website will ease your visitors to navigate from page to page and will increase your total of page views per user.

Actually, pagespeed relies on different elements. But for some types of websites, like ecommerce ones, pagespeed should be your top priority as a bad one could cost you a lot. For instance, Walmart found out they were the fastest retail website compared to sites like Amazon or eBay. They decided to increase even more their speed performances and it results that:

• ‘For every 1 second of improvement they experienced up to a 2% increase in conversions
• For every 100 ms of improvement, they grew incremental revenue by up to 1%’

Thus, a small decrease can result in significant loss of conversion rate as people will be more likely to abandon their shipping or exit your website.

How to Check Page Speed & What to Do About it

While checking your website from various computers and mobile devices can give you a good idea of the “real world” feel of your site, consulting actual data is required to see how much progress you’re making while trying to speed things up. There are several tools available to do this, a few examples being Pingdom Website Speed Test, Gtmatrix, and Web Page Test,. These tools can analyze your site and provide detailed information regarding page speed from both the desktop and mobile index perspectives.

We can help you to speed up your website. Give us a call to speed up your site.