Does your website experience long load times? If you’re trying to grow your revenue, you’re probably wondering, “How does page speed affect SEO?”
As the provider of effective SEO services in NJ, Peppermonkey Media brings experience and dedication to every digital media strategy. We can help you find new leads and scale your business. Keep reading to discover everything you should know about how page speed affects SEO.
What Are Page Speed and SEO?
Search engine optimization is a digital marketing term describing a series of techniques for helping your website appear near the top of search results for Google and other search engines. For example, if you run a painting business, good SEO means that when a potential customer searches “painters near me,” your website is one of the first they see.
Page load speed refers to the amount of time it takes to load an individual page on your website. Every page could have a different load speed, and if your page loads too slowly, potential customers will leave and find what they need on a different website.
The Importance of Page Speed
Page speed directly affects how you rank on search engines. The longer it takes your page to load, the more likely you are to rank lower on results. That’s because Google won’t recommend search results that will frustrate customers.
It also affects how much time a customer spends on your website. According to Google, more than half of mobile users leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load.
Measuring Your Page Speed
Because your page load speed is so important, you should regularly monitor it. You can check it using Google’s PageSpeed Insights, Google Analytics, or an extension for Google Chrome called Lighthouse.
Improving Your Website’s Page Speed
Now you know the answer to, “How does page speed affect SEO?” It’s an essential part of your digital marketing strategy because it directly affects how you rank. Fortunately, you can use several simple techniques to improve how quickly your page loads.
Enable Caching
Browser caching allows you to store certain information about your website, such as images and style sheets, in your browser rather than on a server. This means your browser won’t have to send a request for the information from the server and can just reach into its temporary files to load the page. It won’t increase the load time on the customer’s first visit, but it will for future views.
Minify Resources
To minify means to reduce unnecessary spaces, line breaks, and comments in your website’s programming. Your website uses programming languages such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to determine how your page looks and operates. While these languages follow rules, programmers can add in extra things, such as line breaks, to keep it visually organized.
However, to render the webpage, the browser must read the language every time, so the more page breaks, comments, and spaces you have, the longer it takes to load it. Reducing unnecessary elements in your programming can lower loading times.
Compress Images
Image files are one of the biggest contributors to long load times because they contain a lot of information. Compression tools, such as Gzip, use an algorithm to reduce the amount of data from the image a browser requires to render it on the site.
Use a Content Delivery Network
A CDN is a method of storing a version of your website on multiple servers so your visitors can download it from the nearest one rather than its original host server. While wireless signals travel quickly, if you’re trying to access a website hosted halfway around the world, you might have to wait a few seconds.
By using a network of servers, the CDN can read your location and retrieve the webpage from the nearest access point.
Optimize Media
Optimizing your image and video files is important, but it’s different from compressing them. You can optimize your images and videos using the following tips:
- File type: Choosing the right file type can help your images and videos load faster. For images, use JPG files. You should use the MP4 file type for videos.
- Size: For a standard website, your pictures should size your pictures to 1200 x 675 pixels. This makes it easy to see and detect necessary details without compromising load times.
- Lazy loading: Lazy loading refers to only loading the website content the visitor sees rather than generating everything upfront. For example, the browser will load images while the visitor scrolls. This significantly improves initial load speed while only marginally decreasing the page speed as the person scrolls.
Minimize Requests
Every file you use to create your webpage, including CSS, HTML, images, and fonts, requires your browser to send a request to the server. These requests add up quickly, leading to a loading time of over three seconds. Using plug-ins also significantly increases load times.
To minimize requests, only use necessary plug-ins, combine your CSS elements into a single file, and consider using sprites, which combine multiple images into one for faster load times.
Choose the Right Web Host
The web host refers to the server and company that stores the files and information for your website. If you’re sharing a server with other websites, you’ll likely experience slower load times.
Use these tips to find the right web host for you:
- Determine the purpose of your website. A blog and digital storefront require different features.
- Compare the different hosting options, their features, and costs.
- Research the security and performance features the host offers.
- Confirm the web host offers 24/7 support so you can fix any issues quickly.
Let Peppermonkey Media Meet All Your Digital Marketing Needs
How does page speed affect SEO? It directly affects how high your page ranks on search results. Peppermonkey Media offers expert digital marketing services that have helped hundreds of small and medium businesses increase their customers and revenue.
Whether you’re wondering about dwell time in SEO or need an effective digital marketing strategy, we can help.
To find out more or request a free quote, contact Peppermonkey Media online or call 888-231-9764 today!
