The speed of your website has a big impact on how much love you’re going to get from Google. If you have a slow website, then you’re already likely throwing off lots of your visitors. The amount of traffic that you’re getting is likely to decrease even more if you don’t make improvements soon.
The best search engine optimization company will tell you that the speed of your website should definitely be your top priority. Not only is it giving the proper attention to the user-friendliness of your website, but you are also setting yourself up for some recognition with Google.
Google could be considered as the gateway to most of the websites that you encounter on the internet. If you don’t have a particular website in mind and you want to go to a website that can present you with relevant information that you require, then you go to Google.
Though there are other search engines, Google is definitely the top 1% in many of the countries where internet is accessible. This is why you have to endear yourself to their algorithms if you want to stand a chance in beating your competition when it comes to traffic. Speed is one of the best approaches to it.
Why speed matters to Google
Google has excelled throughout the years by being the hub of quality content for most people. When you need something off the internet, you most likely go to Google first to find it. The trust that they’ve garnered when it comes to the reliability of the content they bring is partly thanks to the algorithm they implemented.
Google’s algorithm prioritizes websites that are user-friendly. If Google tracks that the user hits back even before the page has loaded, then you already have a big problem on your hands. The user didn’t even get the chance to see your content while Google tags your website as a slow one.
What slows down a website and what you can do about it
A website can slow down due to a number of reasons. The first being the amount of content that you have on initial load. If all of the content on the page loads even if the user hasn’t scrolled down, then you are bloating the amount of time it takes to finish that initial load.
The amount of time correlates with the amount of media that you have on the web page as well. The more photos and videos you have, the more likely that your site’s speed suffers. If it is totally required that you have these content, there are different ways of adding them that barely puts a dent on total load speed:
Compress the images that you have on the page and specify the dimensions
Do not autoplay videos and ensure that they do not load unless they are played
Use file types that are better in a quality-to-size ratio such as webm for videos
Put a buffer between the page that is going to be visited and the media to be viewed
Tessa is the best search engine optimization company trusted even by the biggest brands for our disciplined and determined approach to SEO that helps deliver results. Contact us today!