Search Engine Optimisation can be a daunting prospect. SEO is the buzzword right now in driving traffic to your website and boosting visibility in search engine results. The process is both simple and complex. There are several core SEO elements that we need to consider in optimising your pages. From rich content and using effective keywords to a good metadata description and strong backlinking, here we look at another, easy-to-employ tactic that can play a big role in your website’s SEO – Page Load Time.
Website speed test is the tool for analyzing your website speed on a basic, identifying bottlenecks caused by unwanted plug-ins or other heavy scripts. Website speed test helps in evaluating the performance of any website and testing of its loading speed.
passing website speed test well enough shows that you are on-track with a healthy site. The high-performance site is also one of the key factors to reduce the bounce rate and make search engines happy.
Page Load Time or Page Speed refers to the amount of time that it will take for a webpage to load on a viewer’s screen. There are a few factors that can influence how much time it can take to load a page including page filesize, image compression and the site’s server. Have you ever sat waiting for a page to load only to go back to the search results, frustrated, clicking on the next option, and forgetting about that page that took forever to load? That’s the effect of page speed.
The internet measures page speed in many ways, though here we consider 2 of the most common methods:
• Fully Loaded Page: The time taken to load 100% of the resources on a page - the most straightforward and popular method in determining page speed.
• Time to First Byte (TTFB): The time taken for a page to receive that first byte of information from the server – when you have to stare at an annoying white screen for a few seconds.
Taking forever for a page to load fully creates a negative user experience, leading to a higher bounce rate, less time spent on pages (dwell time), and lower conversion rates. Slow page speeds also mean that search engines will take longer to crawl fewer pages within their crawl budget, hurting your indexation.
Many online users still experience slower internet connections, and this can have a big effect on their page speed times. While we don’t think there are too many 56k modems left in operation, some internet users are hamstrung by limited bandwidths and spotty wireless signal. Try to assume that all your website viewers face these challenges in optimising your page speed.
Yes, we’d all love to have that elaborate website, with an animated headline, embedded videos and high-def imagery, but the truth is that these will simply take longer to load and hurt your search engine rankings.
Page speed is now a direct ranking factor with Google – especially since Google’s Algorithm Speed Update back in 2018. This means that how long your page takes to load is one of the leading determinants of where you are ranked in search results. A fascinating study1 also found that a page taking up to 3 seconds to load saw the probability of bounce at around 30%, while a page taking 10 seconds experienced over 120% bounce probability – four times the difference.
Google uses a handy tool called Google PageSpeed Insights to analyse your site’s page speed performance and then offers optimisation suggestions. While this isn’t necessarily the most effective - or easy-to-understand - way to determine how much of an effect your page load time is having on your SEO and ranking, it is a great place to start. PageSpeed Insights will give you a score out of 100. This number is an indication of how quickly your page can load, according to Google, directly affecting your ranking.
Basically, if your page is well optimised to load faster than others, leading to a lower bounce rate, and thus more dwell time, the better your ranking.
You’ve checked PageSpeed Insights and you have your score. No doubt you want to improve on it. Where do you go from here? While there’s no magic formula to instantly optimising your page load time, there are a couple of actions that you can take to kick off the process in getting that load time as short as possible. These are the fundamentals to optimising your page speed, in turn boosting your SEO:
Compressing Images :
Your first order of action. Images can take up anything from 50 to 90% of a page’s size. There are two components here – image file size and pixel size. Start by compressing your images. While this might reduce their quality just a bit, you will keep their sharpness and structure by reducing their pixel size and area. Remember, image pixels take longer to load than text, compressing and reducing ticks both boxes. Wordpress users can use WP Smush, as a great tool here.
Minify your Code : This is also referred to as “code optimisation”. Take a look at the resources on your page. Review your HTML, CSS and JavaScript by removing any unnecessary commas, spaces and needless characters. Get rid of unused code and comments (left over by lazy developers) and your page speed will improve dramatically. Cleaner code – quicker load. For those less familiar with coding, easy programs like GZip and CSSNano are brilliant tools.
Prioritizing Above-the-Fold Content : Above the fold – what the user sees first on their screen once the page loads. Of course, you want this section of the page to look great, but this is also what loads first, and whatever is here determines that all-important load speed. You can always place those pretty images and embed your videos lower down on the page, below the fold, but if you prioritize your information and text in a speedy, efficient way, you get that turbo load speed.
There are numerous other fixes in improving the page load time, including making use of CDN’s, allowing browser caching (where a user saves data from previous visits), or upgrading to a faster host server (minimising your TTFB). But always start with your own page and you will see great results.
So, there you have it. Page speeds and their load times matter in your SEO. Work to optimise your site so that search engines can crawl pages quickly, users don’t have to wait for your landing page to load and make use of efficient resources. Doing so will get you that nanosecond-fast webpage ranked up there with the big guys!
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