Is your website slow to load? This is a disaster that you need to take steps to correct. You are wasting your time building up elaborate pages that no one has the patience to look at. Not only will customers, not stay on the page, but it will hurt your technical SEO. Google uses website site speed as a metric when ranking pages. Having a slow website will hurt your ability to rank on page one of Google and increase your bounce rate. What you need to do is simplify your pages so that people can view them. Here’s how website performance can affect your SEO strategy.
SEO is Useless if the Page Won’t Load
The performance quality, especially the speed, of your site is directly related to search engine optimization. The first thing you need to understand is that your search engine optimization efforts are for nothing if you have slow site speed. You need to delete all of the elements that are slowing down your page so that it will load smoothly.
Content of this type, whether text or images, should be subject to the same rules as the rest of your page. Often times it is the images on your site that are the culprit. You should only use the type of content that loads quickly and is fully optimized for the needs of mobile device users. Your code and redirects could also impact this as well.
Your Page Needs to Load in 3 Seconds
There really is no such thing as an official standard for page loading times. However, most experts in the industry tend to agree that 3 seconds is a fair amount of time to wait for a page to load. You should also keep in mind that this is probably about the amount of the average attention span for most people.
You should think of getting your pages to load as quickly as possible so that you can be more competitive with your rivals in the industry. If they have pages that load slowly, people will start to come to your site instead. The faster your pages load, the more attention people will give to the SEO content there.
It all comes down to being able to gain a competitive edge. Faster loading site pages mean more time spent on reading the content there. This alone could put you out in front of your rivals. Staying there will be a matter of keeping up to speed with web tech.
That being said, it is also important to consider how your site loads and appears on a mobile device. Most people use their mobile devices to look at sites, especially eCommerce, more often than a computer. If your site is not designed to be mobile-friendly, they will leave and go to your competitors.
Take the Needed Steps to Improve Page Performance
There are a number of steps that you can take in order to improve website performance, as well as page speed, of your website for SEO purposes. These steps will include, but will not be limited to, the following:
Shorten Your Total Number of Redirects
One of the very best things that you can do to freshen up your page speed is to get rid of all of the redirects that may still be lurking on your page. Every time you put a redirect on your page, it slows down the loading time.
Use redirects sparingly when you can. There are different types of redirects as well and those that are permanent should not be used for temporary maintenance. Make sure that when you create redirects you are making changes in the Google Search Console so that all the attributes gained from the previous page are transferred to the new one. This is how you communicate with Google’s spider crawlers.
Clean Up the Code on Your Pages
There is no time waster like extra code on a page that shouldn’t be there. It may have once served a purpose in another context that is now gone. But, as of the moment, it’s just dead weight slowing down your page. Whatever it’s leftover from, it needs to go. The sooner you delete it, the better for your page.
Remove Unnecessary Plugins
This can also include the code from plugins. Third-party plugins are often a big culprit for slow website performance so make sure that you remove any plugins you no longer use from the site. Reconsider the functions of some of the plugins you use for your site. Are they essential? Could they be removed?
Reduce the Size of Your Page Images
There is no reason for you to feature gigantic images on all of your web pages. These huge images are causing your page to load much more slowly. If someone has a less-than-ideal web connection, they could be sitting there all day waiting for your page to load.
This is because there are so many pixels that the site needs to load. To improve this use a site that compresses image pixel sizes before uploading the image to your site. Consider changing old images that have not been compressed.
Speed and Attention Span Are the Issues
It should be obvious by now what the main issues are. These should be correctly seen as page loading speed and the attention span of the average viewer. The one needs to be adjusted to be at least as short as the other. This will be the best way for you to get some semblance of the viewing time that you need to succeed.
By using the suggestions provided in this article, you should see improvement in your site’s overall performance. Your site will improve both in terms of ranking and click-thru rate. This will lead to more traffic and conversions over time. That being said, website speed, is only just a part of what makes a website perform great. Take the time to create an in-depth SEO plan and you will see amazing results in no time.
Very informative and useful blog. Well written author