Here is your detailed answer to “How Important is Page Speed for SEO?” Read to the end to understand it thoroughly.
The term “page speed” refers to how quickly the content on your page loads. It appears straightforward; the quicker your content loads, the faster your page speed. However, it’s important to understand that page speed is a bit of a catch-all term. Because there isn’t a single metric that can define how quickly your web page loads.
When describing page speed in the performance of the website, we should not compare it to the speed of a car. A car can travel at 100km/h, which is the car’s speed. However, there is much more to consider when it comes to page speed than just “this page loads in 4 seconds.” It’s far better to consider page speed as part of the overall user experience your visitors will have when interacting with your webpage.
Page speed is measured separately for desktop and mobile devices. This is due to technological differences, which result in a new experience for desktop and mobile users.
Let’s dive into the detail of page speed and answer your question, “how important is page speed for SEO?”
Site Speed vs. Page Speed
Page speed is not like site speed, despite appearances. The estimate of many sample pages on the site is used to calculate site speed. Page speed, on the other hand, explains how long people will wait before consuming a single page.
Elements For Page Speed Measurements
If you are thinking about “how important is page speed for SEO?”, surely these elements will help describe to you as page speed is calculated in a few different ways:
Time To First Byte (TTFB)
This is the time it takes to load the first byte of data on your page. It’s usually a fair indicator of how quickly the server loads.
Time To Interactive (TTI)
TTI considers how long it takes for a page’s interactive elements to load. This is a nice method to see if javascript is slowing down your website.
First Contentful Paint (FCP)
This strange phrase actually refers to how long it takes for the initial element of content on your website to load. Text, an image (even a background image), or SVG could be used.
Loading Time
The load time is the time it takes for a page and all of its elements to load fully.
Mobile First
Technically, this isn’t a page speed measurement. But it is a crucial component of how your website’s page load time is calculated – mobile first. This means that when evaluating the speed of your website, the tool looks at the mobile version rather than the desktop version.
So these were the factors/ elements that make page speed calculation important, and without wasting time, we head on to “how important is page speed for SEO?”
Why & How Important Is Page Speed for SEO?
Page speed is likely the purest of SEO factors, as reducing loading times improves your rankings, user experience, and conversion rate.
It’s a rare case where an SEO metric benefits everyone!
Page Speed and SEO
Google announced in 2010 that page speed would be one of the ranking factors for their search engine.
It also announced in 2017 that it would offer page speed far more recognition, trying to incorporate mobile site speed to rank sites on its “mobile-first” pages or pages that personalize rankings for mobile sites. Google is also testing an Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP), which aims to make pages load faster on mobile devices.
Page and site speed has emerged as an important factor in how search engines rank your pages when it comes to SEO.
This is because Google does not want to produce results that are slow to load and turn off users. With their results, they attempt to present the most relevant and appropriate websites.
With the Google Page Experience Update in May 2021, it will become an even more important factor.
Page Speed And User Experience
User experience is the main reason that search results value website speed so highly. And it is factored into their ranking algorithms.
It is a universally accepted fact that no one has a span of attention of more than a couple of seconds on the internet. So, if your webpage takes more than 3 seconds to load, the possibilities are a large percentage of your audience will abandon it.
Faster websites provide a better user experience. So, search engines prefer to promote them over slower ones with higher bounce rates.
Fast Page Improves Your User Experience
Discussing “how important is page speed for SEO?” how can we not discuss UX improvement because of good page speed?
Google recognizes that the amount of time it takes for a page to load is critical to the overall user experience. Waiting for content, being unable to interact with a page, and even noticing delays all cause friction.
Friction costs time, money, and the experience of your visitors. According to research, waiting for slow mobile outcomes can be more hectic than watching a horror movie. You say, “Surely not!”
Improving your site’s overall speed means making people happy. They’ll enjoy using your site, buy more, and return more frequently. This means that Google will consider your site a great search result because you provide high-quality content. You might eventually get a nice ranking boost.
Page speed and conversion rate optimization(CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is another of the major advantages of speeding up your website and one of the top answers to “how important is page speed for SEO?”
When you improve page speed, you often see a significant increase in CRO because you are not losing users who are waiting for their page to load.
Overall, improving your page speed will help you rank higher, provide a better experience for your users, and increase your chances of converting.
Faster websites provide a better user experience, so search engines prefer to promote them over slower ones with higher bounce rates.
Fast-loading Sites Have Higher Conversion Rates And Lower Bounce Rates
Attention spans are notable for being short. They are becoming shorter as the internet becomes faster. Numerous studies have discovered a clear link between the amount of time it takes for a page to load and the percentage of visitors who become bored while waiting. For example, Google discovered during their research that:
- As page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, the likelihood of a visitor departing a page without interacting increases by 32%. (think with google)
- As page load time increases from 1 second to 5 seconds, the likelihood of a visitor leaving a page without interacting rises to 90%. (think with google)
Your objective should be to be the quickest site in your niche. By providing a quick site, you encourage visitors to stay longer. Not to mention that you’re assisting them in completing their checkout process more quickly. This increases your conversion rate while also building trust and brand loyalty.
Google Needs Fast Sites
Speed is beneficial not only to users but also to Google. Slow websites are frequently slow due to inefficiency. They may have loaded too many large files, have not optimized their media, or have yet to use modern technologies to serve their page. This means Google will need to consume more bandwidth, allocate more resources, and spend more money.
Every millisecond they can save and every byte they don’t have to process adds up quickly across the entire web. And in many cases, minor changes to configuration, processes, or code can result in significantly faster websites with no negative consequences. That could be why Google is so vocal about performance education.
A faster web is best for users and significantly lowers Google’s operating costs.
Improving Page Speed Aids in Search Engine Crawling
Modern websites are extremely complex, and untangling that mess can make a significant difference. The greater the size of your site, the greater the impact page speed optimizations will have. This impacts not only user experience and conversion rates but also crawl budget and crawl rate.
When a Googlebot crawls your website, it also crawls the HTML file. Any resources mentioned in the file, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript, will be downloaded separately. The longer it takes the Googlebot to process your files, the more you have and the heavier they are.
On the other hand, the more time and resources Google devotes to crawling a page and its files, the less time and resources Google has to devote to other pages. As a result, Google may overlook other relevant pages and site content.
Optimizing your website for speed would provide a great user experience for your visitors while also assisting Googlebots in crawling your site more effectively.
Conclusion
Page speed is everything in this day and age. Every day, a new article, Google representative, or SEO expert tells us that optimizing for speed is one of the most important things we can do for our websites. Of course, they’re correct! SEO is influenced by page speed in a variety of ways.
We hope that this article was able to answer all of your questions about why your website’s performance isn’t up to par, how to improve your page speed, or “how important is page speed for SEO?” and how to achieve it.
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