Improving your site's ranking in Google depends on several factors. If your site is slow to load on mobile phones, this may affect your site's ranking by several points.
However, many website owners don't give that particular importance if you are just starting. There is a lot of controversy in the SEO world discussing how important load time is in ranking and increasing your website traffic.
Does site speed affect the ranking in Google search results?
Google made the speed of your site one of the determinants of your site's ranking on its search engines. However, in a study by Backlinko on the impact of site speed on its ranking, they found no relationship between site speed and site ranking in Google search engines on the first pages.
But when we look at the "Speed Update" updates from Google, we will notice that Google updates state that this will only affect sites that provide the worst experience for users, negatively affecting involving all searchers.
While Google says this only affects the slowest websites, site speed also affects ranking factors like bounce rate. For example, it is estimated that the average page load speed of a first-page result on Google is 1.65 seconds. So its web page is too slow; it won't make it to the first page of Google.
Despite this, page speed is often overlooked when setting your SEO strategy, even though it did significantly impact some organic site traffic.
Users spend more time on websites that load faster, and those users view fewer pages as page speed slows. For example, those with an average page load time of two seconds had customers view an average of 8.9 pages, compared to those with a seven-second load time, where users viewed just 3.7 pages. Whether or not page speed directly affects your rankings, it is clear that it significantly impacts user behavior.
Factors that affect the website loading speed
Factors that affect site speed. The page load time does not depend only on your internet connection or browser only, but also on the hosting of the site, file types, and several other factors, including:
- Internet connection: Your Internet type and the speed of that connection can directly affect the time it takes to load a page – even if that page is well-optimized.
- Web Hosting Service: A web hosting company can significantly impact your site's loading speed. If you are working on really slow hosting, this will negatively affect your site speed. When looking for a web hosting service, look for one with an uptime of 99.5% and above.
- Browser: The type of browser used by your site visitors can affect the site's browsing speed. Older versions experience the slow loading of some site resources. Ensure that you are always using the latest version of your preferred browser.
- File types such as photos and videos: The larger the file size on the site, the more difficult it is to download. This usually appears with pictures and videos. This should be improved by compressing images and videos per Google's requirements.
- Plugins: While plugins like WordPress are a great way to add functionality to your site, using only a few is detrimental to the site. Try sparing them; if not, you risk slowing down your site.
- CSS and JavaScript files: Your website consists of JavaScript and CSS files. Try as much as possible to compress the javascript and CSS codes, as they are an influential factor in the speed of your site. It is recommended after excessive use of javascript because it is one of the main factors in slowing down your site.
- Cache filtering: The computer you or your clients use can also affect page speed. A cache on your computer stores information from the websites you visit, making it easier for those sites to load once you see them again. However, if you clear the cache a lot, you will notice that these sites load slower.
How do I test the speed of my site?
This seems simple; the Internet is full of many speed measures that you can rely on to measure the speed of your site.
One of the most important of these tools is Google PageSpeed Insights, which most site managers rely on because it has advantages as it gives you the potential for bugs that you must improve in your website.
For more clarification, here is a working example of our website. You can add your website in the specified place and measure the speed of your site:
A web hosting service allows you to publish your website on the World Wide Web, so choosing a fast and reliable service is essential.
The most important factors for choosing a good web hosting
- Loading time: also referred to as "speed."
- Uptime: A measure of system reliability. We recommend choosing a web hosting provider with a load time of less than 700ms and an uptime of 99.94% and above. To help, we looked at 59 of the best web hosting services and compared the loading and uptime for each provider over the past week. Below are our findings.
- The average page load time for all 60 providers was 885 ms.
- The average uptime for all 60 service providers was 99%.
- The web hosting service with the fastest loading time was HostGator Cloud, with a load time of 232ms.
- The web host with the second-fastest loading time was DigitalOcean, with a load time of 234ms.
- The web hosting service with the 3rd fastest loading time was A2 Hosting, with a 256ms load time.
If you use WordPress, the hosting service from A2 Hosting has the fastest loading time of any other web host in our database. However, there are other features to consider, such as added features, cost, and support.