The fastest websites win the race to the top
Want your website to rank higher in Google? Maybe it needs to load faster.
In 2019, how quickly your website loads is becoming more and more important to Google.
Hobo (UK), a leading source in SEO reference material, explains that:
...the time is for businesses to REALLY focus on delivering the fastest DESKTOP and MOBILE friendly experience you can achieve.
Why is it important to have a fast website?
At the end of the day, Google always wants to lead people to the best quality websites it can find which are relevant to your search.
If your website is performing slower than your competition's site, this is a strong signal to Google that they are providing a better online experience than you are.
An example speed score from https://web.dev
Hasn't Google always cared about page speed?
It's true that since 2010, Google has used page speed as a ranking signal.
We also know that in 2013, SEO experts Moz reported that elements like Time to First Byte (TTFB) have been important to keep an eye on.
The problem was, broad access to tools that helped web designers really keep an eye on these details were scarce and the metrics varied heavily.
Google's investment in making the web a faster place
The changing point came at the beginning of 2018 when we started to see Google mature its experiments with the Lighthouse Chrome Extension and move these features into Google Chrome's Developer Tools.
By the end of 2018, Google also launched Web.dev; a website designed to further expose Lighthouse as a way of measuring critical metrics that Google clearly cares about.
This is Google saying to the world:
"Here are the tools you need to make your website's faster. Ignore them at your peril."
Fast websites really are worth the effort
Even if a "top of page" ranking isn't what you're after, several studies have shown that websites which load faster, convert more leads.
For web designers who are planning a new site, this makes it more important than ever to make design choices which lean towards speed and ease of use.
How to speed up your own website
Whilst we're seeing these strong signals from Google that they want to list clean, fast loading websites at the top of their rankings; we're also seeing so many businesses choose to use themes and CMSs which really put them on the back foot.
If you've got a great website but is just isn't fast enough, there's a lot that can be done to help.
Common issues we look at are:
- Server performance
- Opportunities to implement a CDN service
- Bloated code blocks
- Excessive file requests
- Poorly packaged code libraries
- Heavy media files
- Poorly written code
- Overloaded landing pages
- Caching and compression opportunities
- Too many SQL requests
If this sounds a little too complicated to take on yourself, don't worry, there are plenty of local Adelaide web design agencies with experts who can help.
If you'd like us to assist you, just jump over to our contact page and mention this article.
