Do you know why you should care about the time it takes for a website or a specific page to load? It’s easier than you think. Nobody likes to wait, and in the end it doesn’t matter if it’s the time spent in line at the post office, at the store, or on the web. But of course there are a whole host of other reasons why it pays not to underestimate loading speeds.
Don’t even try with a slow website
In layman’s terms, you could say that web speed is the time from when you typed in a URL (or clicked on a link), hit the enter key, waited for the page to appear, and were able to start viewing the page. In addition to the fact that every user wants lightning speed, search engines want the exact same thing. Since 2010, web speed has even been one of the signals in Google’s search algorithm. Given that a number of factors affect web speed, it is unfortunate that the search engine algorithms that rank results are not public, so we can only speculate about the influence of any particular factor.
Measure twice and then speed it upThe first step to success is actually measuring your site’s speed. There are a plethora of measurement tools to help you do this (Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights or WebpageTest).
Once you have complete outputs and know where you stand, you can take concrete action. There is no universal advice on how to make your site load faster, but some of the most common things that can be tweaked include optimizing code, using compressed files, limiting redirects, leveraging browser cache, or improving server response time.
How are indexing and ranking related to site speed
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For slow-loading sites, the main concern is the higher rate of user abandonment. Google monitors the behavior of these users and responds flexibly. This is because the search engine’s goal is to send its visitors to quality sites that contain answers to their search queries. It is therefore essential that people get to this information in the shortest possible time.
Pages that load slowly can also have a negative impact on indexing. Conversely, fast-loading pages can improve indexation because the Googlebot that processes them spends its allotted time more efficiently and crawls more pages in less time.
So don’t let anyone tell you that speed doesn’t matter! If you don’t dare to measure your website speed yourself, contact us. At Railsformers, we have experts who are able to optimize your website so that it will rank positively in the eyes of search engines :-).