How Does Page Speed Affect SEO?
Search engines use complex algorithms to measure important aspects of your website when deciding whether or not to send traffic in your direction. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others use small elements of your website to determine the quality and authenticity of your site, an action which then translates to where your page appears in search engine results pages (SERP). The process of improving where you rank in a SERP is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search engines use variables like the age of your domain, the time visitors spend on your web pages, the number of links pointing to your website, and page speed to determine if your website meets the quality standards. The internet is full of forums, blogs, and websites arguing over the value of various SEO properties. However, one area that is often left out of the debate is page speed.
Does page speed really matter?
In short, yes. Page speed is defined as a measurement of the time it takes for your web page to load onto a website visitor’s screen. Page loading time is important for a number of reasons:
Site abandonment – If website visitors click on your website and only stay for a few seconds waiting for it to load, give up, and then click away, your search engine results will suffer for it.
Time spent on page – Similarly, if site visitors get impatient waiting for heavy graphics or forms to load, the time spent on your web page will be skewed.
Bounce rate – Search engines know exactly how long it takes for your page to load and how many website visitors leave before the page is loaded. This is called bounce rate and is important in your SEO results.
How to check your page speed:
The only way to improve your page speed is to first know how it is currently performing and then making small changes to attempt to improve it. We recommend visiting a testing site like WebPageTest to determine how much work needs to be done. Most website administrators place the benchmark at 3 seconds. If your page is taking less than 3 seconds to load, then you are in a good place. However, if your page is taking 6 seconds to load, then you have some work to do.
3 important ways to improve your page speed:
#1. Page Speed Insights
This Google website can give you some insight into what is slowing your pages. From image compression to page optimization, you can search out the problem and quickly find a solution.
#2. VPS Hosting
If you are currently hosting your page on a shared server, you may want to consider moving to a Virtual Private Server, referred to as a VPS. Cloud, or VPS, hosting can boost your speed and ensure that you have resources dedicated to your efforts rather than sharing them among multiple accounts.
#3. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
Content delivery networks can save your data in a variety of locations to cut latency, the time it takes for your data to span the globe. For example, with VPS.NET you can add a CDN that saves your data in many different locations to increase availability and decrease downtime. For more information on adding our CDN to your account, visit VPS.NET and open a chat with one of our technical support experts.