HOW PAGE SPEED AFFECTS YOUR SEO AND GOOGLE RANKING

Page speed is literally the speed in which a page loads for the user.  Google has recently moved away from suggesting you focus on pure page speed rather focus around what they call The Core Web Vitals which incorporate measurements around speed. 

Why page speed matters for SEO is a moderately straightforward idea, a quicker site is a more usable site. Google has been exceptionally vocal throughout recent years that one of the primary things they are concerned about outside of the content on the web page and its relevance to the search, is whether the client had a good experience visiting the website or not. They have gone as far as to say page speed is a ranking factor, especially with mobile first indexing becoming the norm.

Search Engine Optimization experts pore over the proof to perceive how algorithms work and how they influence your website ranking with Google and other web indexes. Google utilizes a huge number of factors to decide how to rank search engine results. Commonly, these factors are either identified with the content of a web page itself (the content, its URL, the titles and headers, etc.) or estimations of the authenticity of the website itself (age of the domain  name, number and quality of inbound links, and so on.).

How Does Page Speed Affect Ranking?

Many individuals don’t realize that page speed can influence your ranking. There are two essential measurements for page speed – how long it takes to stack the whole page and how long it takes for your browser to get the first byte of data. 

Page speed can be described as the “Loading time of a webpage”  – how long your program takes to react to the webserver and loads the total content of the webpage. It really alludes to the time a guest needs to hold up until your page is completely loaded. On average, a page load for an e-commerce website takes 7 seconds when the ideal load time is around 3 seconds or less. The average example of page views makes site speed, and Google has conceded that website speed is utilized by its algorithm. Exploration shows this is an ideal opportunity to the first byte, but at the same time it merits understanding that slow load time might be noticeable by users. Slow speed influences how rapidly the bot can index your site. Longer load time lessens time on page and conversion and expands bounce rate (the quantity of possibilities who leave your site right away). 

Moreover, Google has now declared that it might execute a plan that cautions users when a site may load gradually. Some kind of warning badge will tell users a site might be delayed before they click. This is probably going to make users continue scrolling. Google is also working on ways to reward sites that do load quickly. 

With all factors mentioned, speed negatively affects both your SEO positioning and your user experience.

What can lower your page speed?

• Your host: you get what you paid. Over the long haul, a cheap offer  can harm your page speed. Pick the correct host that fits your business size. 
• Too large images: images which are too big can truly bring down your page speed and this is usually because of additional information in the comments or due to a lack of compression. Prefer PNG for images that don’t need high subtleties like logos and JPEG for photographs. 
• External embedded media: external media like recordings are exceptionally important.  However, they can have a huge effect on lowering your load time. To increase some load time, host the videos on your own server.
• Unoptimized browser, plugins, and app: you should test your site  on all browsers since they do not load your site the same way.  In addition, applications like Flash can truly bring down your page speed. 
• Too many ads: aside from the fact that they can be irritating your guests, loads of advertisements have the downside to hinder your page speed. 
• Your theme: some highly designed themes containing a ton of effects can punish your load page. 
• Widgets: some social buttons or comment areas can have an impact on your page speed.
• Double-barreled code: if your HTML/CSS is not proficient or excessively thick, it will bring down your page speed.

It is typical for a site to occasionally load slowly.  High traffic, an issue with the internet, an issue with your server – every one of these things can cause a  temporary slowdown.

Google offers a tool called PageSpeed Insights that gives a fast score of your site.  There are various other speed tries out there, however, Google’s apparatus probably utilizes similar measurements it uses to conclude whether to minimize your SEO ranking in light of the fact that your site is slow. 

Other tools may, however, give you more subtleties with respect to why your webpage is slow, and help you figure out what steps you have to take to improve your site’s performance. Test loading your site isn’t really helpful, as those tests may be influenced by your local speed or the applications you are running on your device. Speed tools sidestep this. Utilizing numerous tools will assist you with detecting all the issues.

If your site is slow, or just not fast enough, what can you do about it? There are a decent number of things you can do to speed your site up and in effect improve your page speed and rank. 

A few different ways to improve page speed are:

• Optimize images. Use Photoshop to compress images. With images, you need to focus on three things: size, format and the src attribute.
• If you have a shared hosting plan, shell out the cash for fair facilitating, or consider getting your own.
• If you don’t have access to the backend databases, be certain that your hosting provider understands what they are doing on that front. Database management is significant in getting facilitated documents productively. 
• Cache files and assets. If you have it set up effectively, all of your stored information will be cached and not load every single time someone loads the pages on your site.
• Minify Javascript and CSS code. Whitespace = time spent parsing. Minified contents kill milliseconds and can prompt a ton of investment funds. CSS holds the style necessities for your page. For the most part, your site gets to this data in one of two different ways: in an external file, which loads before your page renders, and inline, which is inserted in the HTML document itself. 
• Make sure your developers are savvy. Rather than anchoring a lot of contents together (and along these lines prompting unessential parsing), be certain that they are wizards of coding and can compose code that carries out the responsibility in as barely any line as could be expected under the circumstances.

Remember that your work is never done. Your mobile site is never too fast, and your clients will never come running to you when you shave off only a tad bit of your loading time.  It requires continuous work.Your site’s speed influences your page ranking altogether. With Google moving to punish slow sites and prize quick ones, it’s significantly more imperative to enhance and keep up your website. In the event that you need assistance with this as well as with enhancing and optimizing your website to draw in more clients, contact Top Shelf SEO. Our Services might be what you actually need.