Google use page speed as part of their algorithm to help rank your pages. They’ve been doing this since 2010; and in July 2018 page speed became a ranking factor for mobile searches, too.
Amazon undertook a study that showed, every second their pages took to load, they lost 1% of their revenue; and that is the same for all websites, including yours.
When it comes to building a website, speed is crucial. There are many factors that can help improve the speed of your site, however, speeding up your website is not always such an easy task.
If you don’t have a fast website, the problem could be one of many issues from poorly written code, uncompressed images or the website framework or site structure. If your site is fast, Google search rankings will improve.
With this in mind, there are various tools and reports that will help you address different speed issues. Google’s own Page Speed Insights tool recently had a makeover. Unfortunately, they don’t give you the best instructions on getting your score to 100%.
A survey undertaken by Backlinko analysed over eleven million search engine results pages (SERPs) on Google. They found first page ranked sites on Google SERPs have an average page load speed of 1.65 seconds. So this should be the benchmark that you want all your pages to compete with.
As page speed load times decrease, so does the probability of a user exiting your site or worse, receiving a timeout.
Page Load Times vs Bounce Rate
1 to 3 seconds – probability of bounce increases 32%
1 to 5 seconds – probability of bounce increases 90%
1 to 6 seconds – probability of bounce increases 106%
Getting your individual page speed to under two seconds should be your target. In doing so, you should see an increase traffic and revenue.
Google’s benchmark data shows that the best practice for page size or weight is under 500KB. That said, with superfast broadband available to some, and websites being packed with aesthetically pleasing images, the recommended 500kb page size is very often exceeded.
So when reviewing your page content, consider the overall page size and whether all the content is necessary against how it will affect its Google SERP ranking. Always consider the term: faster is better and less is more!
Contact Buzzin Media today to discuss how we can work together to make your company website work better for you.
