Are you tired of losing countless customers because your website is slow? It could be that your website has a high bounce rate or a low conversion rate? Maybe your website suffers from both? It could also be that you have difficulty achieving good rankings on Google? Then you need an SEO speed optimization.
Did you know that 53% of mobile website visitors abandon a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load?
Source: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/google-53-of-mobile-users-abandon-sites-that-take-over-3-seconds-to-load/426070/
Are you aware that speed has a direct effect on all of these factors? One of the primary reasons for a low conversion rate or high bounce rate is often that the website is slow. In addition, Google directly measures the speed of your website when their algorithm has to assess how good rankings your website deserves.
Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/page-speed/#close
In short, it is crucial to have an SEO speed optimization done if your website is slow. Let’s go a little deeper into why it is so important to have a fast website and how you can measure the speed of your website.
Speed is critical to ranking high on Google
Everyone wants to achieve the very good rankings on Google, as the good rankings provide solid organic traffic, which is both free and targeted.
It is far from everyone who achieves the good rankings on Google. One thing that all top results on Google have in common though is that they have a fast website. There is no place for slow websites on page one of Google’s search results.
There are several different reasons why speed is crucial to ranking high on Google.
Google penalizes slow websites and it will therefore require a significantly greater SEO effort to get to the top of Google if you have a slow website.
Additionally, speed is important as speed is a direct ranking factor in Google’s Core Web Vitals. This means that Google measures the speed of your website and, depending on the speed of your website, it will play a direct role in relation to the site’s rankings.
Core web vitals
Core Web Vitals are a series of user-centric metrics that measure the speed of loading, interactivity and visual stability of a website. Google uses Core Web Vitals when ranking websites. Introduced by Google in 2020, Core Web Vitals are designed to help web developers and website owners improve the overall user experience of their websites. The three core metrics that make up Core Web Vitals are:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- First Input Delay (FID)
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
LCP measures the time it takes for the largest element on a website to load, FID measures the time it takes for the page to respond to the user’s first interaction, and CLS measures the amount of unexpected layout switching that occurs during page loading. Check out these articles where Google mentions for the first time that speed is an important ranking factor and talks more about Core Web Vitals:
- Speed is now a ranking factor on Google Search and Ads
- Speed in mobile search rankings
- More about Web Vitals
By optimizing these metrics, website owners can improve their website’s performance, which can lead to better user engagement, increased retention – ultimately improved rankings on Google and more revenue. In addition, however, speed is also important for several different indirect reasons. It includes, among other things:
- Website bounce rate: Slow websites have high bounce rates. This is obviously not good, as you miss out on visitors and potential revenue. In addition, however, it also shows Google that visitors leave your website quickly, which has a negative effect on the website’s rankings.
- Source: https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/building-websites/website-load-time-statistics/
- Website conversion rate: The same applies to the website’s conversion rate. Faster speeds have a higher conversion rate and a high conversion rate shows Google that your website has what Google searchers are looking for. This will also have a positive effect on the website’s rankings.
- Source: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/performance/more/website-performance-conversion-rates/
- Visitors’ average time on the website : Fast websites also retain their visitors for a longer time. It increases the likelihood that the visitor will convert, but it also shows Google that the visitors are satisfied with the website, as they would otherwise leave the website. Keeping your website on visitors for a long time will also positively affect the website’s rankings.
- Source: https://www.section.io/blog/page-load-time-bounce-rate/
This is how you can measure the speed and performance of your website
There are several different good tools on the internet that you can use to test the speed of your website. You can e.g. use:
Here at Riised, we have made it very simple for you to test the speed of your website and see all the most important data about how your website performs. We have developed a speed module which is built on live data from Google PageSpeed Insights. All you need to check the speed of your website is the URL of the page and then our module shows how fast your website is.
What does an SEO speed optimization consist of?
You can do many different things to optimize the speed of your website. What you have to do also depends on which platform you use. However, here are five things that can generally increase the speed of your website:
- Optimize images: Large images can slow down a website’s load time, so it’s important to compress and optimize images for web use. This can be done using image optimization tools, which reduce file size without compromising image quality.
- Minimize HTTP requests: When a browser requests a web page, it also requests all of the web page’s elements, such as images, stylesheets, and scripts. Each of these elements requires an HTTP request, so minimizing the number of requests can help speed up the webpage’s load time. One way to do this is to combine multiple CSS and JavaScript files into one file, and use image sprites to combine multiple images into one file.
- Activate caching: Caching enables a website to store frequently used data in the user’s browser, so that the website can be loaded more quickly on subsequent visits. Website owners can enable caching by configuring HTTP headers, specifying file expiration times, and using a content delivery network (CDN).
- Minimize Code: Removing unnecessary code, such as spaces and comments, can help reduce file size and improve web page load time. Website owners can also use minifiers to compress their HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
- Upgrade hosting: If a website is still slow despite optimizing images, minimizing HTTP requests, enabling caching, and minimizing code, it may be time to upgrade to a better hosting plan. A dedicated server or virtual private server (VPS) can provide faster load times and better performance than a shared hosting plan.
Is your website slow?
We make speed optimizations and do it with 100% measurable results. We are experts in speed optimization:
If your website needs a speed optimization, then just contact us. We will gladly do a free and non-binding potential analysis of your website.
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