Page Speed SEO - Tips For Speed up Your Website

2. Google page speed is an important tactic to draw heavy traffic to a website and improve SEO at the same time. This article will cover why speed pages are indispensable and valuable to SEO. We will discuss everything about page speed, how it affects SEO and how you can speed up your website to reap SEO’s benefits.

3. What is Page Speed? Page speed is a unit of measurement of how fast the page on a certain website loads. Let’s keep in mind that site speed and page speed are different. Site speed is actually the page speed for a sample of page views on a site. Page speed can be measured with Google’s PageSpeed Insights. Page speed can be measured in two ways: 1. 2. Page load time – The time it takes to fully load the contents of a page Time to first byte – How long it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of information from a web server.

4. Why is Page Load Time Important for SEO Let us look at a few page speed numbers and what they mean for a website’s growth. 46% of users dislike waiting for pages to load and the most hated about browsing from a mobile. Even something as small as a 100-millisecond delay in the load time can lower an average session by 70%. Online shoppers up to 79% say if they have issues with the site’s performance they will not return to the website again. Sites that load in five secondssee 70% longer average sessions. Page speed lower than 2 seconds see an average bounce rate of 9% whereas, a spike of bounce rate of 38% for pages that load at 5 seconds. ● ● ● ● ● Page speed is vital to online users because faster pages provide a better user experience. As per one of the kissmetrics infographics a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load, more than one-fourth of the users will click away from the page and choose a faster loading website.

5. An increasing bounce rate is an SEO nightmare. In the same survey, 73% of people reported visiting a mobile website which was slow. Page speed affects the rate of conversion.They bring down conversion rates with higher page load speed. In 2010 Google introduced page speed as one of the ranking factors for their search index. This goes on to show that page speed is important for SEO. To know more, please visit PageSpeedSEO. A couple of years later in 2017 Google announced that it will hold page speed at an even higher ranking factor includingmobile website speed to rank on its mobile-first pages. Google is also evaluating AMP (accelerated mobile pages) – it is a project to make websites load faster on mobiles. Even more recently Google has expanded the significance of user experience by introducing Page Experience to its ranking signals. This new ranking system mixes up Core web vitals with existing metrics like mobile user experience, secure browsing to produce search signals for an all-inclusive page experience.

6. Why PageSpeed Matters and Some More Statistics Consider these pagespeed statistics: Google has stated “The probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds”. ● As the world moves towards using the internet on their mobile devices, a user-first experience is indispensable. The aggregate of time spent on mobile devices is increasing year after year. With mobile devices becoming the most popular way to browse the internet, it is essential that businesses keep mobile speed lighting fast.

7. What is a Good Page Speed Score A 100/100 is not what we are trying to achieve. Even if you don’t have a perfect score your website can still be pretty fast. Keep in mind that PageSpeed by itself is not an indicator of load time. The probability of reaching a perfect score is unlikely, despite making extreme changes or improvements that positively impact your load time for the website. Keep in mind that the real indicator of capabilities for a website’s load time, not a PageSpeed Insights score. That being said, Google has put it down that a poor score is between 0 to 49. The next average score is 50 to 89 and a great score is anything is 90+. A high aim is a good goal, but don’t obsess about getting a full 100 score. Keep in mind your competitor’swebsite and how they stack on SERPs. Semrush says about page speed, “If you have got a faster load time and a better PageSpeed score, yet still only score, say, 92/100, there is a good chance your efforts couldbe better allocated elsewhere”.

8. Core Web Vital - How They are Affecting your Ranking Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google considers important in a webpage’s overall user experience. Core Web Vitals are made up of three specific page speed and user interaction measurements: largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift. In short, Core Web Vitals are a subset of factors that will be part of Google’s “page experience” score (basically, Google’s way of sizing up your page’s overall UX).

9. Why are Core Web Vitals Important? Google has proposed to make ‘page experience’ an official ranking factor. Page experience will be an amalgamation of elements that Google considers for the user experience that includes: 1. 2. 3. 4. HTTPS Lack of pop-up ads A safer browsing experience Mobile-friendliness Core web vitals will be an integral part of that score. Looking at the announcement and the very name of it, core web vitals will be important for the experience score. Pointing out the importance of a great page experience score will not easily push a page to #1 on Google. Google has mentioned that page experience is one of the 200 approximate page ranking factors used to rank websites in search.

10. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) How long it takes for a page to load from the POV (point of view) of a user. In simple words, the time taken from a click to actually seeing all the major contenton the screen is LCP. LCP represents what really matters to the users – being able to see a page and interact with it. LCP is unlike other pagespeed measurements in the way that it doesn’t take into consideration what it is like for a user to click and open a webpage. A webpage’s LCP score can be checked on Google PageSpeed Insights. This measurement is helpful in the way that it spots areas a website needs improvements. The additional benefit of using Google PageSpeed Insights over other tools like Gmetrix is that by using Google you are seeing real-worldperformancebased on Google’s browser data.

11. First Input Delay (FID) Let’s hop onto the second Core Web Vital – First Input Delay. Once your page has achieved First Contentful Paint can users interact with the page? Things included in FID measures – the time it takes for users to be able to interact with a page. The time it takes to be able to choose an option from a menu. Clicking on a link from the site’s navigation. Being able to enter email addresses. Openingup “accordion text” on mobile devices. ● ● ● ● FID is important because Google takes into consideration user experience and user interaction. FID and FCP both have a fixed acceptable criteria. FID is the measurement of how long it takes for a page to load before a user can do something on it. A content-only page, like a blog or an article, FID is easy to achieve. The only interaction happening on the page is a user scrolling down to read it, or zooming in and out of the page.

12. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) Now let’s get into CLS. CLS is how firm or stable your web page is while loading. Here stability means visual stability. Simply put, the elements on your page should not move around while the page is loading. If your elements move it means you have a high CLs score which is bad news. A few tips to improve your CLS score. Use a set size feature for dimensions of any media like images, videos, etc. this will let the browsers know in advance how much space an element is going to take upon the page. So there will be no changes as the page fully loads. Ads should have a fixed space too. Otherwise, if the ads are dynamic, they can suddenly appear on the page disrupting content and moving it around. User interface elements should be placed below the fold. ● ● ●

13. A List of Free PageSpeed Tools ❖ DareBoost ❖ Website Speed Test ❖ SEO Site Checkup ❖ Dotcom-Tools.com ❖ GTmetrix ❖ WebPageTest ❖ Google PageSpeed Insights ❖ Pingdom

14. 17 Ways to Improve PageSpeed ❖ Terminate render-blocking resources ❖ Avoid critical request chains ❖ Minimize request counts and keep transfer sizes small ❖ Minimize CSS files ❖ Minimize JavaScript ❖ Eliminate unutilised CSS ❖ Decrease server response time ❖ Image size ❖ Postpone off-screen images ❖ Make images compatible with new formats ❖ Enable text compression ❖ Preconnect to third party scripts ❖ Preload key requests ❖ Lower page redirects ❖ Use cache control ❖ Evade from big network payloads ❖ Avoid extreme DOM size

15. Page Speed Insights - How to Use Google PageSpeed Insights PageSpeed Insights rates the speed performance of a web page for mobile and desktop. Google also provides suggestions to make improvements on the page. It is a free tool, in collaboration with an open-source tool called Lighthouse. Lighthouse collects data from a website and analyzes it in combination with Google’s Chrome User ExperienceReport’s data. The average score is sectioned into Good, needs improvement, and poor categories. Good: Scores of 90-100 Needs Improvement:Scores of 50-89 Poor: Scores of 1-49 ● ● ●

16. Google PageSpeed Insights is easy to use It is fundamentallysimilar to Lighthouse. Lighthouse is available as a chrome plugin. That said, it’s easy to get started with Google PageSpeed Insights: 1. 2. 3. Visit the Google PageSpeed Insights page Input your web page URL Click Analyze After analyzing the website for a few seconds, Google will deliver a report that shows the overall performance score with a categoricalbreakdown.

17. The generated report is divided into several sections: ❖ PerformanceScore: The overall score ❖ Field Data: Google’s real-worlddata, if available ❖ Origin Summary: A review of the Core Web Vitals ❖ Lab Data: The metrics calculated from Lighthouse ❖ Opportunities: Suggestions to help the page load faster ❖ Diagnostics: More information about the performance of the application You can select between desktop and mobile websites to view different versions of the report.

18. Summary Page Speed is crucial for ranking on Google. Google perpetually concentrates on measuring speed with other user experienceelements. Page speed is one of the many KPIs for SEO that is taken into consideration for ranking. Do you have questions about Page Speed or optimizing your site’s performance? Shrushti Digital’s SEO audit service provides actionable insights into putting your site on the right path, and our team can take care of the implementation work required to increase targeted search traffic to your business.