Google has implemented its mobile-first algorithm. Offering businesses with mobile friendly websites improved search engine rankings. By adding site speed to its algorithms in 2010, Google found the huge effect page speed has on business and its online traffic. Page speed is how long your browser takes to receive information from the web server or the page load time. Site speeds are an accumulation of multiple page speeds for a collection of a sites page views.
How Does this Help You?
Faster page speed not only enhances the user experience, it reduces operating cost. Also, outdated algorithms were based on desktop searches only, leaving out the monumental growth of mobile usage and page speed, which highly effects your SEO Ranking. These SEO rankings hugely affect online traffic. These rankings are where your site is shown on user searches in all of the search engines used today.
The Experiment
This experiment found users were mostly affected by return result time and browser content display loading time. This experiment also added 100 to 400-millisecond server-side delays before and during browser transmission. This demonstrated a 0.2% to 0.6% decline in searches per user. Yeah, sure, we are talking milliseconds here, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you put the loss of possible profit into milliseconds and multiply it by 7 billion, you will get a rough estimate of what you are missing out on. And, just a slice of that pie can keep your business producing.
Mobile-first
Extradigital.co.uk and Google suggest that most people now start their internet searches online and will then later move to other devices. This makes your mobile site their first impression of what you offer. Desktop sites are still very important to user traffic on your website, however, mobile first indexing puts you there first. Desktops sites are, however, better than a half-working mobile site so make sure that you have your mobile site tested and complete before launching. A half functioning mobile website can be extremely damaging to your potential online market.
Speed up or Lose Out
Enhancing your page speed to 5 seconds or less has shown to enhance user experience and is a key to enhancing your SEO. Moreover, It is where your business ranks in views to millions of users across the web. Basically, the only way this can hurt business is if your mobile site isn’t functioning properly. Investing in your websites is profit gaining any way you look at it. There are many sites out there ready to help you with all of these processes. There are also structured data tests and page speed tests you can run to compare your site.
If your website is bloated and you want an SEO expert to optimize your website for speed, schedule a digital marketing consultation today!