How Page Speed Affects SEO-(Free Site Speed Testing Tools)
Speeding up your page’s load time could lead to higher ranking in Google
Building a beautiful website is essential in making sure it attracts the end-users eye. In previous posts, we have covered the importance of making sure a site is tagged correctly using the 4 most important tags. When it comes to ranking on Google, a beautiful website can lose ranking if the site’s load time is too slow. Google considers your page speed an important ranking factor. If your site isn’t optimized to load quickly, you won’t rank as high.
Quality website load time
Page speed refers to how quickly a page on your website loads. For all websites, the quicker it loads, the better. Think about how annoying it is when you are looking to buy something off an e-commerce site, and the site takes too long to load. A slow website can cause the end-user to back out and not finish the purchase.
We recommended having your site load in two seconds or less. Anything longer than three seconds is hurting your website’s SEO ranking.
Three ways to Improve Page Speed
- Optimize Images:
Image size plays a big part in how quickly your site responds. For all the WordPress users, there are plugins like SMUSH that make uploading a new image to your website at the right compression easy.
- Choose a quality hosting company:
Some agencies have their own in-house server for hosting options. We do not have our server, but we have followed recommendations from CNet in choosing top hosting providers. So far, we have not run into any trouble using Godaddy. If you happen to choose a hosting provider outside of Cnet’s recommendations, make sure to do your research. Having your site go down can cost your business both money and clients.
- Use quality Plugins:
If you happen to have built your site using WordPress, you know that there are plugins for everything. This method involves the use of a staging site… don’t eliminate anything before implementing! In order to see if there is a specific plugin slowing down your site, remove all plugins and add them again one by one.
Checking Your Page Speed
When checking a website’s load time we prefer to use the free service
GT Metrix. This free tool will analyze any website and give actionable recommendations on how to improve site speed.
There are many other free services that you can use. Type in “site speed test” in Google, and a list of the top page speed service providers will show up.
By now, hopefully, you understand the importance of page speed to your bottom line. If you need help getting your website to load faster, please reach out to the Algorithmic Global Team for help! We can help your website gain quicker load times. We can also help optimize your site for both Google search and the end-user experience.
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