Search marketers know: what is good and true today may be replaced by a new development by tomorrow. As of July 1st, Google Mobile Page Speed is among the ranking factors of the world's leading search engine. But what impact does this have on the ranking and visibility of websites?
What is page speed?
Page speed refers to the time it takes a website to fully load. Speed has a tremendous impact on the user experience and is therefore an important factor in search engine ranking. Up to now, the influence it has on user experience has made page speed an indirect ranking factor as slow pages generally have a much higher bounce rate than fast pages. Now Google has made speed a full-fledged ranking factor.
Google has provided a tool that can quickly and easily check the load time: Google PageSpeed. This tool analyzes the structure of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, the integration of images and the caching requirements of the web server.
How can I optimize web page speed?
In order to check if optimization measures are necessary, you should first use the Google-provided PageSpeed Tool. Once the check has been completed, Google proposes appropriate measures that would improve the page speed.
Such optimization measures can be, for example:
- Reducing HTML, JavaScript and CSS
- Reducing server response time
- Eliminating JavaScript and CSS resources that block rendering
- Not using redirects
- Using browser caching
- Reducing the size of resources by compression
How does my page speed affect the search engine ranking?
Since the update announcement, people have been voicing concern that even pages that are already pretty fast may be affected and have to become even faster. John Mueller, Google's webmaster trends analyst, tweeted that the update only affects the slowest pages and that only these pages can improve their ranking through a better loading speed. Hence SEOs can breathe a sigh of relief - the update seems to be less bad than expected. However, it is still recommended to run a PageSpeed test regularly and make any necessary adjustments.
