{"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":"
<\/a><\/p>\n 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\n
Why Site Speed Matters<\/h2>\n
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How Mobile Browsing Matters to Site Speed<\/h2>\n
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