Importance of Website Speed for SEO | How to improve Website Loading Speed.

Published by Gurjit on June 20, 2023
Categories: BLOG SEO

Website loading speed is the time taken by a website to load a page completely. Website speed can severely impact its SEO performance.

A good website takes no longer than 2.5 seconds to load. Google has asserted that website speed is a major ranking factor for SEO.

Table of Contents

Website Speed As Best Practice for SEO.

It is common for website owners to think that website design is more important than website speed, which is incorrect. While having a good UI is beneficial, it’s also crucial to maintain the website’s loading speed. UX is a term used to describe the user experience and enhance the pleasure of users when they interact with a website.
The speed of a website is crucial for its SEO performance. A slow-loading website negatively impacts user experience. Users find it irritating to wait a long time for a website to load. Of course, users will exit the website and proceed to the next result in a Google search. The user won’t come back to that site again. It will directly impact website SEO.

Website Speed As User Experience In Core Web Vitals

Google uses Core Web Vitals to measure user experience in the real world. Metrics of Core Web Vitals are loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability of a website page. According to Google, website loading speed is very important for the user experience, and it has a significant impact on the website’s SEO.

Next, Google divided website speed into the following factors:

LCP (largest contentful paint) is a measure of loading performance. For a good user experience, it should be less than 2.5 seconds.
FID: First Input Delay measures interactivity. The FID should be less than 100 milliseconds. It is a time span from clicking a link by user to respond of browser.
CLS: Cumulative Layout Shift Measure Stability should be less than 0.1.

So according to Google, website speed is an important measure for a good user experience. which ultimately improves website SEO.

Website Speed to Decrease Bounce Rate

Visitors who leave the site before completely loading the page or only viewing the first page and total visitor percentage is called bounce rate.
A high bounce rate indicates that there is a lack of user engagement time. It sends a signal to Google that the site does not have proper quality content so that users spend less time and leave the site immediately. Google ranks such sites lower in the SERP.

Website Speed To Improve Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the total number of visitors divided by the number of visitors who perform some action on the website. These actions include viewing a video ad, clicking an affiliate link, clicking an ad, subscribing, and so on.

The user performs some other tasks on the website. These are also components of website speed.

If website actions like clicking and navigation are quick, users can complete more tasks in a shorter period. All of This greatly improves user experience. So users spend more time on fast-action websites compared to slow-speed websites. Slow websites are a source of frustration for users.

More stay of individuals on the website, and a good UX (user experience) encourage users to take action.

So website loading speed and response to action play a significant role in increasing CRO.

Impact Of Website Loading Speed On Mobile Website SEO

Most traffic for websites and blogs comes from mobile devices, as more than 60% of users access the internet on mobile devices.
As mobile phones use low internet lines, creating a website that provides faster downloading speeds for mobile devices becomes more critical.

Websites that do not load quickly on mobile devices have a higher bounce rate. Users leave the website before loading it. Website speed impacts user experience significantly. Website speed is a crucial factor in mobile SEO.

By creating mobile-friendly websites, we can increase website speed on mobile devices. A responsive mobile-friendly website detects the target device and renders the website according to the device.

Factors Affecting Website Loading Speed

Several factors affect website speed, listed as follows:
Page Size: The size of the page affects website loading speed. A page includes JavaScript, CSS, images, and videos. A large page takes more time to load.

HTTP requests: The number of HTTP requests to the server and the response time of the server also affect page loading speed.

Poor coding standards: If website coding is not according to standard, it also affects website loading performance.

Non-mobile-friendly websites: Websites that are not responsive and not mobile-friendly may have longer load times on mobile devices.

Third-party scripts: Third-party scripts such as advertising scripts and tracking codes can also negatively impact website speed.

Heavy WordPress: The use of too many plugins and a heavy WordPress theme in the case of WordPress also slows website loading speeds.

Hot-linking: Hot-linking is the act of linking images from someone’s website directly to save bandwidth.

Hosting Performance: Hosting performance plays an important role in website speed.

Hosting Location: The distance from the client to the server also affects website speed. More distance increases network latency because files have to travel more distance from server to client.

Network Condition: A slow user network also affects website speed.

If a website takes longer to load, it harms the user’s experience. the user’s experience. If a page doesn’t load within 2 to 3 seconds, visitors are more likely to leave the website. It will increase the bounce rate. It severely impacts website or blog SEO

Tools for Testing Website Loading Speed

Several website speed testing tools are available. Google’s PageSpeed is a free tool. It helps us to Discover what your real users are experiencing, Apart from the website’s load time, It also tells us about Performance, Accessibility, Best practices, and SEO. It reveals ways to improve website speed.

Here is a Google PageSpeed report about it10x.com.

First Contentful Paint: 0.9 s

LCP : 1.2 s

Total Blocking Time 0 ms

CLS: 0.001.

Speed Index 2.2 s

Website owners should measure the success of website speed optimization by tracking website speed metrics. These metrics can provide insight into the effectiveness of strategies and help website owners identify areas for improvement

Strategies to Improve Website Loading Speed.

1. Hosting Company

Good hosting company. Hosting is a very important factor in website speed. So we should choose a hosting company with good speed.

2. Images, Videos, and other Media Files Optimization.

Reducing the size and number of images, videos and other media files makes it possible to reduce loading times. Online services exist that can reduce image size.
But sometimes it is necessary to use more files, in this case we can use a different method to optimize the media files.
Selecting the most suitable file format:
The size of PNG and GIF files is larger. Use JPG and Web format for a large image in the website in place of PNG and GIF images. Only use PNG format for logos and GIF format for animated images.

The size of WEBP image file format is very small compared to JEP, PNG, and GIF.
WEBP images are a great way to reduce the page size of blogs and e-commerce websites.

Lazy load:
Lazy loading techniques can be utilized when there are more images or an image gallery on a website. Lazy loading only loads images that are necessary and in the viewing window, and those that are not in the viewing window are loaded later. This technique enhances performance and saves system resources.

3. Compressing file size

CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files also increase page size. Enabling compression by using minimizing, can reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes.

4. Use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs).

A CDN stands for a content delivery network. It is a network of distributed servers located at different places that cash the content of the website and other services. When a website requires content, it serves it from the nearest location.
CDN helps to improve website speed in two ways.

First: We can direct links to font files, icons, and JavaScript libraries to their CDNs, instead of storing them on our own webserver.
It minimizes HTTP requests to the website’s main server and helps to improve the efficiency of our website server.

Second: We can take CDN service for our website file, Using content delivery networks (CDNs) we can minimize the distance between the user and the server.
It will enhance the loading speed and improve the loading time of the website. Also, use a local server if a website is required in a particular area.

Hosting companies and independent companies offer this service.

6. Minimize the Use Of Third-party Scripts.

Third-party scripts such as advertising and tracking codes, can negatively impact website speed. Website owners should reduce the number of third-party scripts on their websites to improve website speed.

Improving WordPress Websites And Blogs Speed.

In addition to the measures mentioned above, we need to consider the following factors to enhance the speed of WordPress websites and blogs:

Caching plugins: There are caching plugins available for WordPress that can be used. The cached pages of the website are loaded quickly by these plugins when users request them from the server.

Use lightweight WordPress themes and fewer plugins: Light WordPress themes and a limited number of WordPress plugins are necessary. WordPress speed is reduced by heavy themes and plugging.

WordPress Maintenance: Regular WordPress maintenance is necessary for optimizing our blog and website. This article is a great resource for learning about complete WordPress maintenance.

Conclusion

Website speed is a crucial element of SEO, impacting user experience, engagement rates, and overall website performance. Website owners must strive to optimize website speed through various strategies and tactics to impact their SEO performance positively.

I hope all this helps you to improve your website loading speed.