Page speed is the amount of time (in seconds) it takes between the browser’s request for a page until the browser completes processing and rendering the content. Many factors, such as images, scripts, and CSS, contribute to page speed. Ultimately, this influences how quickly the user can access all pages of your site.
Results from Google show that crawling, indexing, and ranking websites depend on the speed at which a website responds to server requests. Faster responses mean better rankings in search engines like Google.
Mobile page speed is important for SEO because it affects how quickly a user can reach all of the pages on your website, especially those that are popular and important to the user. Let’s explore some reasons why mobile page speed matters for SEO.
1. Page Speed Will Affect User Experience
User experience is a big factor in the success of a website. Users will want to use your site if it is easy to navigate, and you need a quality user experience to ensure that they return regularly. This means that pages with large amounts of content may not be as important as users perceive them. Page speed affects your user’s ability to use these pages. Consider an article with large images, a video, and a lot of text. If that page doesn’t load quickly on a mobile device, the user may become annoyed and leave the page before reading all of the content. This means that your site has less traffic from this user. Mobile users don’t want to wait for pages to load, so it’s in your best interest to ensure that every page loads quickly on their devices.
2. Page Speed is an Essential Ranking Factor
Google has stated that a page’s speed is one of the ranking signals it uses to determine where a given page will appear in search results. This means fast pages receive a higher ranking, and slow pages receive less. This can mean higher visibility for your business. For example, if your website is slow on mobile devices, you might want to consider ways to increase the speed of your site. Core Web Vitals are one way Google determines a website’s speed. They are the criteria a site needs to pass to be mobile-friendly by Google.
3. Fewer Errors and Crashes
If your site has a high number of errors or if it crashes frequently, this affects the user experience drastically. If users notice that your device is slow and keeps having issues, they may believe that you don’t put the time and effort into the quality of your website, leading them to go elsewhere for their information. For example, if your site has a lot of pop-ups, this can be frustrating to the user. They may close the page and try another one on their list to use for that task.
If you want your website to succeed today, you must ensure that it is fast on your users’ devices. To increase your rankings, traffic, and revenue, you must keep mobile devices in mind when designing and creating your website.
4. Better Conversion Rates
A well-designed page that loads quickly creates a better user experience. It allows users to find what they want quickly and easily, leading to less frustration overall. This helps the user to finish their task on your site. If you can give the user what they need in a way that doesn’t frustrate them, you will increase your conversion rate and traffic to the website on mobile devices. SEO for mobile traffic helps to support the success of your site.
Ways of Improving Page Speed
If you want to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, and its pages load quickly on all devices, these are a few helpful tips to keep in mind:
1. Optimize the Images on Your Website
Images have the largest impact on the speed of a page and can take up a lot of time in your front-end coding, which slows down your website. These images are also important to the user’s experience on your site because they will want to see them when they visit. If an image doesn’t load quickly, the user may leave your site without seeing all of the content you have for them. Make sure that you optimize your images for a positive user experience.
2. Optimize Your Website Design
The design of your website is a factor that affects the speed of your pages. High CSS, long scripts, and large images can slow your mobile pages. It is important to work with designers that understand the importance of mobile friendliness. A good designer can optimize their page for fast page speeds for all types of devices.
3. Get Good Web Hosting
The speed of your website depends on the speed of your server. High-quality web hosting services can improve the overall performance of your site. A good host will have a high network bandwidth, giving you more space to save images and files, high levels of reliability and security, and the ability to keep your website up-to-date with security patches.
4. Optimize Your Site for Mobile Page Indexing and Ranking
Google uses mobile-first indexing for its search results. As a result, your website needs to be mobile-friendly, and built with a responsive theme. There’s nothing worse than having to pinch-and-zoom on a smartphone to see a webpage. You can test the mobile-friendliness of your website via Google Search Console. But it’s important to test your website using Core Web Vitals, and to make sure there are no invasive pop-ups, or other obstructions on your site, that make navigating it on a mobile device cumbersome.
Solve Your Page Speed Issues
Sky SEO Digital specializes in technical SEO amongst other areas of digital marketing. We have many years of experience helping businesses optimize their websites. Contact us today to see how we can help your website be mobile-friendly and rank better in mobile searches.
