{"id":42379,"date":"2017-03-06T04:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/?p=42379"},"modified":"2022-10-21T08:36:48","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T15:36:48","slug":"insanely-fast-site-mobile-seo-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bruceclay.com\/blog\/insanely-fast-site-mobile-seo-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Why an Insanely Fast Site Is Your New Priority"},"content":{"rendered":"
The concept of an insanely fast site is something Google has been talking about for a long time.<\/p>\n Are you convinced that site speed is your top<\/em> priority for optimizing user experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n In this post, I\u2019ll cover:<\/p>\n Throughout the years, Google has implemented a host of recommendations and tools to help website owners make their sites faster. These guidelines and tools support the core of our SEO services<\/a>.<\/p>\n After all, fast sites are good for the end user. And Google wants to feature in its results those websites that offer a good user experience.<\/p>\n No matter how you slice it, the message from Google is clear: faster is better.<\/p>\n In fact, in late 2016, Google rep John Mueller said to keep page load time under three seconds<\/a>.<\/p>\n @vivek_seo<\/a> There’s no limit per page. Make sure they load fast, for your users. I often check https:\/\/t.co\/s55K8Lrdmo<\/a> and aim for <2-3 secs<\/p>\n \u2014 John \u2606.o(\u2267\u25bd\u2266)o.\u2606 (@JohnMu) November 26, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Back in 2010, Google said site speed would be a factor in its ranking algorithm, albeit a lightweight signal<\/a>.<\/p>\n In its announcement, Google explained why site speed matters:<\/p>\n Speeding up websites is important \u2014 not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed \u2014 that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Notice that last sentence: \u201cWe use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.\u201d<\/p>\n If every website that shows up for a particular query has about the same average page load time (even if that happens to be on the slower side), your website will be considered normal.<\/p>\n However, if your website\u2019s page load times are much slower than the average, you\u2019re at a disadvantage.<\/p>\n Former Googler Matt Cutts mentioned back in 2013 that when all other things are equal, page speed can factor into rankings<\/a>.<\/p>\n For example, if I do a search and all the relevant web pages load are between 1.5 and 2.5 seconds, Google isn\u2019t going to use site speed as a factor for ranking.<\/p>\n But, if there\u2019s a web page that takes 12 seconds to load, it\u2019d probably see a demotion in rankings. You have to be average compared to the performance of every other web page for that query.<\/p>\n So the question is actually: Is faster an advantage or is slower a disadvantage? I think the latter.<\/p>\n Google\u2019s no stranger to giving mixed signals, though. Remember that tweet from John Mueller? Well, here\u2019s another tweet from Google\u2019s Gary Illyes that mentions not to worry \u201ctoo much\u201d about page load time:<\/p>\n @seefleep<\/a> I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Make it as fast as you reasonably can.<\/p>\n \u2014 Gary Illyes \u1555( \u141b )\u1557 (@methode) April 21, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The bottom line is that you should care<\/em> if you have very slow page load times.<\/p>\n And, you should try to meet Google\u2019s recommendations if you can, making sure pages load within just a few seconds.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s talk about how site speed manifests in various scenarios.<\/p>\n Mueller recommended a three-second ceiling for HTTP page load speed. But when it comes to mobile, Google\u2019s official stance<\/a> here is to have above-the-fold content render in one second or less<\/em>, so that the user can \u201cbegin interacting with the page as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n And, in the coming months, it\u2019s possible this will factor into mobile rankings<\/a> in Google’s mobile-first index.<\/p>\n This is significant for site speed optimization because with the mobile-first index, Google bases its rankings on the mobile version of your website<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can test the load times of your pages with Google\u2019s PageSpeed Insights tool<\/a>. Here, Google explains the need for above-fold-content that is immediately usable<\/a>:<\/p>\n PageSpeed Insights measures how the page can improve its performance on:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example of the types of issues that can improve load times as reported by the\u00a0PageSpeed Insights test:<\/p>\n One of the things we\u2019ve discovered is that the results of a PageSpeed Insights test changes over time, and lately it has been very much biased by image load times.<\/p>\n Apparently, a lot of website publishers have gotten their overall page load time to be fast, but their images do not load quickly.<\/p>\n In order to make mobile page load time faster, image compression will be an area of focus. Determining whether an image is even needed may be one of the next things you have to decide in prioritizing efforts of your mobile SEO strategy.<\/p>\n In new research published by Google<\/a>, the key recommendation is to keep the average request count (the number of individual pieces of content needed to display the entire page) below 50.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting how the practice of reducing content for mobile speed optimization may impact your rankings in this new mobile-first index world.<\/p>\n What is currently being served as your mobile site is what Google would consider for indexing and ranking in its mobile-first index. If the mobile version of your site only displays a portion of all available content, then Google will only consider that part in its ranking calculations (and not any additional resources available in the desktop version of a site).<\/p>\n If a site has a responsive design configuration, as Google recommends<\/a>, everything on both the desktop version and the mobile version should be accounted for by Google, right?<\/p>\n Not exactly. In responsive design, you tell the site not to display blocks of text or certain images in a mobile device.<\/p>\n Traditionally, Google would index the desktop version of your site. Whatever the desktop image was, that\u2019s what Google would index and use to rank.<\/p>\n Then, when a person loaded that page on a mobile device, at that point, you could control what was displayed. However, the index was based on the full desktop version of the content. Responsive design just decided what was displayed or not for a mobile or tablet device.<\/p>\n Now Google is moving to a mobile-first index. Whereas the desktop version of the site used to matter most for search engine optimization<\/a>, now it’s the mobile UX that counts.<\/p>\n If the mobile version of your site is not displaying certain content or images, Google will no longer consider it in ranking and indexing.<\/strong><\/p>\n For example, on your desktop site in your footer, you might have 50 links. But in the mobile version, you don\u2019t want to clutter it up so you only display 10. When Googlebot crawls your page, it\u2019s not going to count 50 links, it\u2019ll only consider the 10.<\/p>\n As another example, consider the way people have approached mobile performance in the past \u2014 by cutting parts off of their page, like images or content. If that\u2019s your approach for the mobile experience, you need to understand you\u2019re cutting out content that may be helping you rank.<\/p>\n So, what do I recommend?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n You do want to create a fast experience when mobile users come to the site \u2014 that\u2019s still important. But you have to balance the content you need to rank with the mobile experience.<\/p>\n Design your website around the mobile experience to start.<\/strong><\/p>\n Only display content that is worthy of being displayed on a mobile device, even on your desktop pages. It may require you to have more web pages with less content, because that 2,000-word page may not be mobile friendly.<\/p>\n And when it comes to speed, website publishers may cut out images because loading a particular image on a mobile device takes too long. These common activities geared towards increasing your page load times may actually cause the content to no longer be indexed in a mobile-first world.<\/p>\n This brings us to Google\u2019s latest project geared towards speed: AMP<\/a>.<\/p>\n We cover AMP in detail in our guide here<\/a> and even provide a quick-start guide on if and how to implement AMP<\/a> into your website.<\/p>\n AMP is an open-source project that effectively helps website publishers create faster mobile experiences via specific configurations that:<\/p>\n Google has said AMP won\u2019t impact rankings<\/a>, but with all the signs that faster is better in mobile, I wouldn\u2019t rule out AMP\u2019s ability to load pages faster as a way they might inherently rank better.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that AMP is not an easy thing to implement on a website, and the specifications for AMP are reportedly changing often. As the program expands into more and more potential types of websites (remember, it started out with just news sites and expanded from there), Google is constantly having to make compromises.<\/p>\n And then, of course, there is<\/em> a cost to develop in AMP. You are going to need to actually change your site to support it. There are also ongoing costs as AMP specs change, because you need to update pages. Then there\u2019s the risk that Google will abandon AMP or come up with a different system such as making your website behave more like a mobile application.<\/p>\n Choose your AMP pages wisely.<\/p>\n If you want to compete online, your website has to be fast.<\/p>\n The message from Google is that speed counts. But there are many ways to achieve site speed.<\/p>\n This requires you to weigh the costs and benefits of mobile configurations, including responsive, AMP and more.<\/p>\n All the while, keeping in mind that changes you make to your mobile site can and will impact your rankings in a mobile-first world.<\/p>\n Let us help you drive and track traffic to your website with a mobile SEO strategy. BCI\u2019s services are tailor-made to match your business goals and audience. Let\u2019s talk more about growing revenue through mobile-friendly SEO.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The concept of an insanely fast site is something Google has been talking about for a long time.<\/p>\n Are you convinced that site speed is your top priority for optimizing user experience?<\/p>\n Read this post to learn:<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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Why Site Speed Matters<\/h2>\n
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How Mobile Browsing Matters to Site Speed<\/h2>\n
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The Need for Speed in the Mobile-First Index<\/h2>\n
Weighing the Option of AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)<\/h3>\n
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Beating Your Competition to the Finish Line<\/h2>\n
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