Everybody hates slow sites. Period. There’s not a single person today, who likes to wait for more than a couple of seconds until a web page is fully loaded. And that’s understandable. Our attention spans are getting shorter, while sites become better at optimizing their loading speeds.
That’s why it’s a proven fact that conversions can be greatly affected by website performance. Your search rankings may be as dependable on your site’s speed as the conversions.
And here’s why.
Google Says So
It was discussed numerous times and explicitly stated by Google that site speed, in fact, affects search engine rankings. Although, as was proven by a number of experiments, it seems like Google only penalizes slow sites and there aren’t any preferences for sites that are fast.
To put it plainly: if your pages load relatively fast, this part of the algorithm will most likely not affect you. But if your pages take ages to load, you will be penalized by Google. So, as Google’s employees have indicated in the past, aim for 2-3 seconds of page loading time if you don’t want to lose search engine positions.
The Mobile Experience
While you may have a well-performing desktop version, you can’t ignore the speed of your site for your mobile users. With Google’s push for mobile friendliness, you have to have all of your bases covered.
Speed is essential for mobile experience as it affects loading times and data caps, as slower pages are usually the ‘heavier’ pages due to the amount of assets that have to be displayed. This greatly lowers the quality of mobile experience and Google wants its search results to be perfect in every way.
Forget About SEO
But it won’t make a difference for your bottom line, if people aren’t satisfied with that they see on your website in terms of usability and design. So start treating site speed optimization as a user experience issue.
So, to recap, yes – page loading times may affect your search rankings, but only because Google considers this to be a very important factor for user experience. And you should do that to. Focus on what’s convenient and useful for your visitors and you will hardly ever worry about your search engine rankings again. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and GTMetrix will help you to define website optimisation priorities.
If you’re looking for someone to build you a stunning website with lightning-fast performance – we’re right for you. We are the Cheerful Lime – a superb Liverpool web design agency. Feel free to drop us a line, if you need web design help or just want to chat.
