Google Site Speed SEO
Why You Need To Get With the Program Now
If you’re not already with the Google Speed Initiative, you’re going to want to stay ahead of the Site Speed SEO competition. This program is designed to improve the user experience for online shoppers by making websites load faster. Google isn’t messing around – if your website doesn’t meet their speed requirements, your ranking could take a hit. What can you do with Technical SEO to make your website up to snuff?
What is the Google Speed Initiative
And What It Means For Business Owners
It’s no secret that Google takes great pride in the services that they offer. With that, the name Google has itself become synonymous with search engine technology. A juggernaut of the internet at large, Google has become the go-to search engine for anyone looking to expand their knowledge or find new products.
Over the years Google takes great consideration when deciding which websites to display to searchers. For over a decade now, load speed has played an increasing role in that decision. It was all the way back in 2010 when Google decided that speed would be a major factor in their ranking system.
Now, it seems that Google is once again working to improve the overall user experience. They are hoping this new system will be able to identify sites that load particularly fast or particularly slow and mark them accordingly with banners.
It is not fully known yet how this will affect metrics like CTR’s or website traffic, but as Google continues to reward fast-loading sites, we may find ourselves moving towards a new standard of web development based on increasingly strict criteria.
Google appears to be implementing this new system in stages and wants to build a more robust system by which to gauge the value or relevancy of a site. Accordingly, they don’t want to just dump a brand new algorithm all at once on us. Their goal seems to be to encourage and reward sites that put the work in to optimize their sites.
This isn’t entirely out of the left-field – Google is always tweaking its algorithms much to the chagrin of many digital marketers. Learning to change and adapt with the algorithm is a major part of the experience of being a digital marketer, made especially difficult by the fact that Google is often reticent to share any major details with the community. But that’s all part of the fun.
The main change here seems to be the introduction of a badges system, which is basically a way for google searchers to actually see Google’s estimate on the quality of your website. Now Google judging our sites is nothing new – that is literally the whole point of developing SEO, but the broadcasting of this to searchers is definitely new.
The benefits of optimizing your website for speed
Tips and tricks for speeding up your website
So, what do we do now? Well, ideally, you already have a website set up and running. If you don’t, and you are interested in getting one set up with the help of web design and development specialists and experts, please check out these amazing offerings and see how our team can set you up for success.
Once you do that, your next job is to make that website load as quickly as possible. What does that mean? It means making sure that every element of Site Speed SEO from photos to meta-text is as lean as possible, so that the website itself is leaner and will be able to load faster. There are additional services, such as a content delivery network and a cache plugin which you can also utilize to reduce the time that it takes for your website to load.
Is there an ideal speed? The gold standard as of now seems to be around 2 to 3 seconds. Beyond that, go any longer and you will begin to see a marked uptick in bounce rate, getting as high as 40%. That’s conversions left on the table, ripe for the taking! Google wants to reward changes that you make to keep your website running at optimal speed.
Conclusion
So what are you waiting for? Get started on optimizing your website speed today!
If you want to learn more or need help optimizing your website with Technical SEO, don’t hesitate to reach out to the experts at Allegiant Digital Marketing. We can assist you in making your website as quick and efficient as possible so that your customers have a positive experience and are more likely to return in the future.
