Page Speed is an important part of a website’s functionality, and it can also impact SEO. In today’s blog post, we review what page speed is, how it affects SEO, and some best practices that your business can implement.

What is Page Speed?

When you click on a search result, how many seconds are you willing to wait for the content to load before you leave and look elsewhere? Chances are, not many: According to Google, “the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.”

Page Speed is the measurement of time that it takes for the content of a webpage to load. And as we’ve just established, the faster the Page Speed, the better. But it’s not just important for the user experience (though that’s certainly a crucial component of a successful website). Google has confirmed that it takes Page Speed into account when determining search rankings.

How Page Speed Impacts SEO 

Because Google uses Page Speed as a ranking factor, a slow loading website can really hurt your search result rankings. Of course, the relevancy of the site is much more important, but if two sites with a similar relevancy ranking are competing with one another, it stands to reason that the website with the faster results will have a better ranking.

Google has a tool called PageSpeed Insights, which allows users to evaluate their site’s Page Speed and learn what adjustments should be made. While there doesn’t appear to be an official bulleted list of the specific Page Speed factors that Google uses to determine search rankings, this tool is certainly a good place to start.

When you enter a URL into the PageSpeed Insights tool, you’ll receive two results pages: one for mobile, and one for desktop. On each page are four rankings for performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO. So, let’s dive into some of the metrics you might see when you generate this report, and what you can learn from Google’s findings.

Understanding PageSpeed Insights

The PageSpeed Insights tool provides a lot of information that can be nearly overwhelming, especially if you’re not a web developer. Here are some of the main results you’ll need to understand in order to optimize your website speed. Remember that these are just the basics; you’ll be able to see a lot more information on the actual insights page.

• Performance: An “overall” score determined by metrics
  • First Contentful Paint: A metric that represents the time at which the first element on the page is loaded
  • Largest Contentful Paint: A metric that represents the time at which the largest element on the page is loaded
  • Speed Index: A metric that represents how quickly the contents of a page are “visibly populated”
  • Opportunities: A list of “opportunities” to improve your website’s Page Speed
  • Diagnostics: A list of insights providing more information about your site’s performance
• Accessibility: A score for accessibility, with lower scores indicating more opportunities to improve a website’s accessibility
• Best Practices: A score determined by a website’s use of general web dev “best practices
• SEO: A score that is determined by whether your site is adhering to “basic search engine optimization advice”

So, you have all the information. But what do you do with it? We recommend going to the Opportunities section of the report. Under each opportunity is a recommendation by Google to improve your site’s speed, complete with estimated storage or time savings. While all sections of the report are certainly going to be helpful in optimizing your site, the Opportunities section is the easiest place to begin.

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