1…2…3. That’s how many seconds you’ve got for your web page to load before about 40% of shoppers give up and try a competitor. It’s not long is it? Site speed is also a big thing in SEO. With Google’s algorithm (and other search engines) putting more weight behind user experience, website speed is becoming
1…2…3.
That’s how many seconds you’ve got for your web page to load before about 40% of shoppers give up and try a competitor.
It’s not long is it?
Site speed is also a big thing in SEO.
With Google’s algorithm (and other search engines) putting more weight behind user experience, website speed is becoming a ranking factor that can impact whether customers see you in the first place.
So, if you want users to find your website in SERPs, and actually click through to your website, improving your website speed isn’t something you should sleep on.
Why site speed matters
As far back as 2010 Google has said that page speed is a ranking factor for desktop searches.
As Google said at the time:
“Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed – that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”
Google
It took nearly a decade later, but Google finally said in 2018 that page speed was also a ranking factor for mobile searches.
How much of a ranking factor page speed is in isolation isn’t completely known.
Especially with hundreds of factors playing a role in Google’s algorithm, and things like topical authority, relevance and links most often spoken about as the “main things to focus on”.
But page speed is definitely a contributing factor to your position on SERP.
Whether a highly relevant website that loads slightly slower than a less relevant site would rank lower is questionable. But all things being equal, a faster site speed can push you ahead of the competition.
Looking to improve website speed shouldn’t just be about rankings.
You’ll know yourself, there’s something satisfying about a page that loads almost immediately when you click a link.
And according to studies, site speed can impact bounce rates and conversions.
Website conversion rates drop by an average of about 4.5% for each additional second of load time between 0 and 5, according to one study.
Of course, site speed is now one part of determining a website’s performance since the introduction of Core Web Vitals.
Core Web Vitals have been Google’s yardstick for what makes “good website performance” since 2021.
These core web vitals can play a role in page speed optimisation, looking at a few specific metrics:
This is how fast the main content loads (less than 2.5s is good)
This is how visually stable the page is (how much parts of the page jump around)
This judges how fast a page responds to an action (whether that’s a user clicking a button, or scrolling)
If your website fails any of these site tests, there’s always a risk you could rank lower in SERPs than a site that performs better.
Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Lighthouse and WebPageTest can help you audit your core web vitals and see where you might need to make improvements.
Here’s a quick example of PageSpeed Insights from our own website to show you what it looks like:
It also lets you see how the mobile version of your website is performing:
The benefits of improving site speed aren’t just theory.
Vodafone reported an 8% increase in sales after improving LCP by 31%.
One potentially overlooked thing you can do to improve your website’s overall speed is to design for mobile first.
It would be fair to say most companies approach web design and development thinking about browsing from a desktop.
But most people now browse on mobile, as shown in this report from StatCounter:
This means many websites are missing the mark on mobile core web vitals because their sites include large image files, sluggish scripts and unresponsive design that look fine on desktop, but not mobile.
Now you might be thinking, “that’s great, but I’m in B2B and our shoppers use desktops”.
But that’s shifting too.
About 50% of B2B enquiries are now coming from mobile, according to Google, so if you’ve not got a good mobile experience, you could be losing customers regardless of whether you’re B2C or B2B.
Something else to consider about site speed is the location of the servers where your website is hosted.
When someone clicks a link for your website, a connection is made between the browser and the server, which is then processed and delivers your webpage (which is a really over-simplified way of explaining it).
But, the point is, the location of your server can play a role in site speed.
Say you’re a UK business, and most of your customers are browsing in the UK. But your website’s server is in the US.
This means the data to process opening your website has a longer way to travel (from the UK, to the US, and back again), which means your website could be slower than a competitor using a server in the UK.
There are lots of things you can do to improve your website speed. Some of this you can do yourself. But for some tasks it might be worth getting in an SEO agency or developer to help.
Reduce file sizes for media like images, audio or video. There are file compression tools you can do to make this easier.
Remove unnecessary characters from CSS, Javascript or HTML files. Or combine files where you can.
Store frequently visited sites or resources in your browser to improve site speed in the future.
This can work well if you’re an international business. You can distribute content on different servers around the world (closer to the end user) so information is delivered quicker and pages load faster.
Upgrade your hosting plan or optimise your server performance by reducing redundant queries, reducing file sizes or upgrading hardware.
This stops images and videos from being loaded onto a page when they’re not visible. They’ll only load as the user scrolls, which can improve the initial page load speed.
Delay Javascript and CSS files loading if they’re not 100% needed for the initial rendering of the page.
Live chat widgets and social feeds can all impact site speed.
If your website has lots of custom fonts through the page this can take longer to load each element.
Web Core Vitals and site speed are something you’ll need to pay attention to if you’re struggling to rank your website in SERPs.
While there’s no way of knowing how much of a ranking factor site speed is for SEO for businesses, the fact it’s a ranking factor at all means it’s something you need to improve along with your content and technical SEO.
If you’re not sure how to tackle site speed and need some professional help, we’re here for you.
Just get in touch, we’ll audit your website, and provide a full report on your SEO performance, including site speed, along with a plan for making improvements.
Speak to a member of our team and start your project today!
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