How Does Page Load Speed Affect SEO?

Why is Page Speed Important to SEO?

Page speed is a ranking factor. It addresses the loading times of your website, improving user experience, rankings, and conversions. 

SEO and Site Speed

Site speed has become an important ranking factors for search engines. That means when your pages are fast loading, you can increase your ranking. Google wants to deliver fast loading results that provide a good user experience (UX). 

User Experience and Site Speed

User experience (UX) has become more important than before. Google, and the other search engines, want to provide users with a good experience when searching on the internet. This means that site speed has become a very important factor to user experience. No one has the attention span of more than a few seconds when using the internet these days. People are living with faster internet connections and therefore, they expect faster results. If your website takes more than three seconds to load, you are probably losing valuable customers.

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) and Site Speed

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) gets a welcome boost when your web pages load quickly. It reduces the risk of losing valuable users that could convert into customers. When you boost your page speed, you improve your ranking, improve user experience (UX), and increase your chances of giving your conversion rates a boost.

How Fast Should a Web Page Take to Load?

This is not a very easy question to answer. If you ask most end users they will tell you they expect a website to open within two seconds, preferably less. The good news is that users do not have to wait for your site to load completely before they can start using it. This means in some cases, the first contentful paint and time to interactive are important. 

Why is My Website Slow to Load?

There are a number of reasons why your website may be taking too long to load your pages:

• Code overhead or bloat is a common reason why your website may be slowing down, especially when using popular platforms such as Wordpress. Off the shelf website builders are brimming with code that may not be relevant to your website, resulting in slow page loading times
• Images and videos are other common reasons why you may be experiencing slow loading pages. When adding images, you want to the highest resolution, but you need to also minimise the file size, enabling it to load quickly.
• Slow servers are other common reasons for slow page loading times. You will know it is the server when your time to first byte is slow. When your server cannot deliver files quickly, it negatively impacts your user. 

How do I Know If My Pages Are Loading Quickly?

There are numerous free online tools you can use to determine how long it takes for your pages to load. The most effective is Google PageSpeed Insights that analyses your website speed,. It not only advises on the loading speed of your pages, but also provides information on what elements are slowing down your site and what you can do to resolve the problems.