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From Google– and it has been officially confirmed that site speed is one of the factors that influence site positioning in search. This is especially important for sites on mobile devices. According to the data from According to Google, the likelihood that a visitor will leave a website increases by 32% as the page load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds.

No matter how well the site is designed and contains content that meets the needs of the user, it is original and informative, all of this falls into the water if a large percentage of users do not wait for the site to load and see its content.

How does site speed affect positioning?

In addition to affecting the overall user experience , which is officially one of Google’s ranking factors , which leads to a greater number of visits to the site’s pages ( reduces the bounce rate ), site speed enables better crawling by Google bots, and sites that are loaded faster and have a higher conversion rate , thus bringing more income.

What factors influence?

There are many factors that affect site loading speed. Loading large files, unoptimized content (media) on the site, a server that is not good enough (fast) are factors that affect the site not being fast enough.

Here are the main factors that Google should pay attention to when improving site speed .

  • Enable file compression on your site to reduce the size of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. The recommended app for this is Gzip. WordPress has several plugins that can solve this problem.
  • Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML files. Google recommends using CSSNano and UglfyJS to address this issue.
  • Limit and reduce the number of redirects because they slow down the site, since each time a new page is loaded, a new protocol of client requests and responses from the server is waiting, which slows down the site.
  • Take advantage of caching on search engines. Search engines retain (cache) a lot of information when loading a site. The cache memory helps to keep all these resources from being loaded again when the user visits the site again, which significantly increases the loading speed.
  • Images on a website often carry a lot of weight, so their optimization is of great importance. The recommended photo compression tool is tinypng .com.
  • Use a CDN. CDN represents a network of servers distributed in different geographical locations, which enables a shorter period of responding to requests, and thus faster loading of the site. Google ‘s CDN is located at the following address.
  • Optimize time to first byte. Parametar koji meri koliko vremena je potrebno da pretraživač primi prvi bajt informacija od web severa. Parametar koji se smatra važnim u generalnom rangiranju sajtova.
  • The following address contains how to prevent blocking on site loading due to Java Script blocking until it loads: PageSpeed ​​Insights API

Site Speed ​​Test Tools

Google Page Speed ​​Insights is a free Google-this tool that evaluates the speed of the site and gives useful information about what we need to fix to improve the speed of the site. Where will you get better information on how to improve the site, if not from yourself Google has determined the factors and requirements that affect speed.

In addition to this Google site speed measurement tool, an excellent and very useful tool is GTmetrix . Like Google Page Speed ​​Insights , this tool provides excellent analysis and suggestions on how to improve the site.

Other useful tools are Lighthouse , also a Google product, then the website WebPageTest.org .

Lighthouse is easiest to use via a Chrome extension that is very easy to install. Lighthouse provides us with a lot of data and advice on what to do to improve website performance. So, Lighthouse helps us analyze each page individually. WebPageTest allows us to check the response time of the server we are using. With this site we can check how this factor affects the performance of the site. (From the offered locations, we choose the one that geographically best suits our request).

A key factor on mobile devices

When it comes to site loading speed Google has put the accent on the speed of the site on mobile devices. This can also be noticed in the notifications that appear in the Search Console – about the fact that the site is a mobile first index. This means that Google primarily considers the mobile version of the website when indexing and ranking. As of January 2019, all new sites are subject to this procedure, while old sites are switched to mobile first when Google judges that they have met the criteria.

This means that everyone needs to adapt their sites to load as quickly as possible on mobile devices. For that reason Google launched an initiative-project that is open source (code that is available for everyone to use, update, improve…) called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Web pages that use AMP in search on mobile devices are specially marked with a lightning bolt icon.

If we know that speed is one of the most important factors for ranking on Google , and at the same time we add rumors that AMP is one of the factors that counts in the mobile first index on Google-u, then we definitely have to take this technology as an essential item. In 2018, the official was published WordPress plugin that supports AMP. Given that AMP Google ‘s initiative certainly needs to be given the necessary attention, since it is to be expected that Google will try to implement your idea to the end. Given that search is increasingly moving to mobile devices, the application of technologies that speed up site loading on these devices is certainly of key importance for SEO.

And there is pop over pop

Speed ​​isn’t really the most important thing though. Google heavily enforces T ime to First Byte (TTFB) in ranking results, and this metric is very different from your page load speed. In fact, many SEO professionals agree that Google places significantly more value on TTFB than page speed.

TTFB is the time required to request information from the server and send the requested information. Or simply put, the time from when you come to the site until the first content starts to be displayed.

Like most elements in SEO, TTFB is closely related to user experience. Users who have to wait for your page to load (with no real indication that the site is active and intending to load in the next few seconds) are very likely to leave the site due to a bad experience. The more you frustrate your users, the more Google will devalue your site.

According to the recommendations TTFB on the website should be less than 200 milliseconds (ms). This number also varies by the type of content on your pages. Static content should load at 100ms, while dynamic content should load at 200-500ms.

 

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Made by Nebojša Radovanović – SEO Expert @Digitizer