Since the latest updates to Google’s algorithm, page speed has been looked upon more favourably than ever. And, when you think about it, it really makes sense – the loading speed of a page can seriously enhance or damage the customer experience. Nobody likes to visit a site which takes forever to load, no matter which device they are using. Page speed doesn’t only affect your SEO, it can also cause you to lose traffic to your competitors as disgruntled users decide that they’re not going to wait any longer for the website to load so that they can do what they need to do. Can you really afford not to have a fast-loading site?
The Customer Experience
Recently, Google has begun to put much more emphasis on the overall customer experience when deciding which sites get the top spots in the SERP. Where you appear isn’t just down to keywords and other SEO techniques, it’s now also hugely dependant on how easy and enjoyable your site is for users to visit and browse. One of the biggest changes that Google made to their algorithm regarding this was making mobile-friendly sites more preferable, something that caused havoc as SERPs were rearranged overnight and those sites which weren’t mobile-friendly suddenly saw themselves drop from the top spots. Loading speed is arguably just as important – in much the same way as visitors don’t enjoy squinting at a non-mobile friendly site on their smartphone, nobody enjoys waiting over a few seconds for a site to load, either.
SEO Best Practices
If you take search engine optimisation seriously, you should definitely be making site loading speed a priority. Google added site loading speed to their list of SEO guidelines and best practices, indicating that it is a huge factor used by their algorithm in order to determine where to place websites in the SERPs. This means that if your site is taking ages to load, no matter how perfect all your other SEO strategies are, you may still never get that coveted top spot. If you want to appear at the top of the SERPs (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) it’s time to get your site loading speed to put its foot on the gas.
What Causes Slow Loading?
Slow site loading can be a result of a range of different factors. One of the most common reasons for a site to take ages to load is that there are far too many things on the site, which take loads of time to upload such as large picture files or huge videos. Recently, you may have noticed a trend in simply designed, easy-to-navigate websites. This isn’t just because they’re nice to look at – it’s also a method of keeping site loading times as low as possible by removing any unnecessary components. Your web host could also be a problem! If you’re using a cheap or even free hosting service, it could well be the reason why your site takes longer than others to load. Visit Certa for more information on upgrading your web host.
Do you agree that slow-loading sites should be penalised? Let us know in the comments.
