Site Speed, is it worth it from a SEO point?
-
Hi,
I understand a site which loads quickly is greater for the user but how does site speed affect rankings?
I mean does Google log the speed pages load, the faster it loads the better the signal? So say I have a page which loads in 1.5sec would Google 'Rate' the site better if it loaded in say 0.8sec?
Thanks.
-
One easy way that I've found to help with pagespeed is with cloudflare's free subscription. It does a lot to speed up your site, such as auto minifying, css, html and javascript. It also caches your pages and greatly reduces server response times. It also does some other stuff and offers security features which is another benefit.
-
One more here and just because I wanted to clarify this further on what Benjamin mentioned. Yes, site speed is important for SEO and we can go through all the reasons. The real reason you want good site speed is that you make more money as your users are happier. People who come to your site are more likely to convert the faster your site is, regardless of if they came from Google, Bing, Organic, Paid, direct, etc etc.
Amazon has actually calculated this. They estimate that a page load slowdown of 1 seconds would cost Amazon 1.6 billion in sales each year.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cost-amazon-16-billion-sales
This type of research has been done at many other companies, including Google. If you are trying to measure the impact of site speed, don't look just at ranking, look at conversion. There is where the real money is.
-
Not only is is worth it from a search engine point of view but also for your visitors, they want the site to load fast or else they might leave. Check out google speed test https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ to see what you can do to make your website faster.
-
Yes, Google has been fairly overt when it comes to application performance. Just to give you a little insight into how important Google thinks speed is, they cut any internal application if it's even slightly sluggish. And further, wouldn't you think it's significant when they display that they've delivered nine billion results in .0000023454355 seconds?
There are a lot of easy, quick, wins you can have in under five minutes. Here's a couple to start you off.
GZip Compression:
Odds are you're using one of these server flavors. This is a very quick way to increase speed. Just be very careful when editing/updating .htaccess. The slightest bit of white space or a syntax error will take the site down. Your host may even be able to do this for you in some fashion, but a lot of them shy away from even supporting .htaccess. So once you start down that road, it's lonely a one - save for some forums.
Reduce Image File Size:
There are tons of ways to reduce image file size without a lot of hassle. Some will losslessly compress (no reduction in image quality) other forms are 'lossy'.
Google Page Speed Tool (Lossless - In Chrome Dev Console ctrl+shift+j, yo)
There are a ton of other ways, but these are some easy ways to get a faster page.
-
Hi,
I have had great results from speeding up pages of my site and I also spending quite a lot of time, money and effort keeping my pages as fast as possible. If you use tools like GTmetrix and google provides tools in GWMT you will see not only a decrease in pageload time but a boost in organic rankings and an overall better user experience. I agree with Prestashop 100%.
-
In short, yes. I cannot remember which article or which video I saw it in, but one of the guys from google was interviewed and someone said the term "search engine" to him. He replied that Google likes to think of themselves as an "experience engine". That being said, they strive to provide the sites that promote the best user experience. A slow site does not provide that. I would be willing to bet, 10 times out of 10, two sites that were equal in every other aspect, the faster one would rank higher.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
No-Indexing on Ecommerce site
Hi Our site has a lot of similar/lower quality product pages which aren't a high priority - so these probably won't get looked at in detail to improve performance as we have over 200,000 products . Some of them do generate a small amount of revenue, but an article I read suggested no-indexing pages which are of little value to improve site performance & overall structure. I wanted to find out if anyone had done this and what results they saw? Will this actually improve rankings of our focus areas? It makes me a bit nervous to just block pages so any advice is appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Open Site Explorer - Spam analysis: need help with inbound links... from my site!
hallo, reading my spam analysis report from open explorer, I found somenthing I don't understand (please see attached image): The long list of links inside the red rectangle are inbound links with a spam score of 5 coming from my same site. How is that possible? Should I remove those links? Also , I see that many of those links are links present in the top navigation bar (about page, home page, service description etc.) or in the sidebar section of the website (categories, recent posts, recent comments). Should I treat them differently? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | micvitale0 -
Need onpage site audit and seo
i have a pretty old ecommerce website for home decor products. It has been experiencing some rank loss in the past year. No manual penalty but algo rank losses. I need someone to fix seo related issues on my site. It runs on magento with multistore configuration. please reply if you can offer any help nick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | orion680 -
Domain Forwarding for SEO
Hey guys, I recently created a new website for a client who was ranking #1 for the term "jupiter obgyn" but they have now dropped down to #4. This happened because their old home page was at www. instead of just jupiterobgyn.com. When you type in the www. version, it does take you to the root domain but it's not carrying the old PA! The www. version of the page had a 22 PA and the new root domain hosted page is a 1. How can I fix it so that "link juice" carries over? Is this something i need to do in 1and1 (their web host) or within Wordpress? Thanks!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Best way to host multiple sites for maximum seo
We have over 100 websites we built for clients that we currently host on 1 shared godaddy hosting account. They each have a link to us but since they are all under one shared account, we feel that we are not maximizing the inbound link potential. I've looked into c class hosting but found that either the ip's were flagged as spam, or they shared nameservers which defeats the purpose. I've also been told that since the c class ip's a hosting company gives to you are all owned by them, that also defeats the purpose. Anyone have any solutions besides opening 130 accounts with different hosting companies? Also, will it make any difference changing existing sites onto different hosts now or are they already tainted?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seopet0 -
SEO for Log in Sites
Hello, I just lunched a website where you have to sign up and to log in in order to use it. So I have the home, also a blog but then the rest of the pages are let's say it "hidden".How would you do the seo for it? I have been cheking facebook, foursquare and some others and they use different approaches. Facebook uses the same description in every single page for example. My site is similar to foursquare users have profile, stats, history, ranking. Well, what is your advice?? Thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | antorome0 -
How would you fix this site?
We're currently in the IA and design phase of rolling out a complete overhaul of our main site. In the meantime I've been doing some SEO triage, but I wanted to start making a longer term plan for SEO during and after the new site goes up. We have a pretty decent domain authority, and some quality backlinks, but we're just getting creamed in the SERPs. And so on to my question: How would you fix this site? What SEO strategy would you employ? http://www.adoptionhelp.org Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdoptionHelp0