Question

Having a fast loading website is great for UX. But For me, it's an irrelevant and minor SEO ranking signal. What are your takes?  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpV...do0og

Answer 1

I think it does matter somehow. Yesterday I got this message in speed experimental section

Comments

@avulsion i have that for all URLs on a website, but all ranking good. some of them are # 1 for mutiple keywords. It's a good practice to try to have a fast loading site, but shouldn't be an obsession that might force you to sacrifice some important aeshetics elements on the page

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@senegambia Apart from SEO factor if it's taking quite a long even user may not like to wait however these specific URLs were taking 4s-6s that shouldn't make a bigger issue for rankings still I did some tweaks and sent them for validations. Let's see!  

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@avulsion the fact remains that Google Adsense and google analytics are the major reasons for slowing down pages in several blogs or news sites that use them

Answer 2

It's not worth thinking of as a "how much % is this ranking signal". Quite simply people get pissed off and impatient if a page is slow. So whatever reason you want people to visit your site, you want it to be 'quick enough'. In the end there's not really an excuse for a page not loading in < 3 seconds. Google in the past made a push for people to use If-Modified-Since to be more technically graceful, 'page speed factors' in SEO (IMHO) is just to penalise sites with ridiculous loading times or way too many assets.  

Comments

@picture It may be a ranking signal. But i won't go overboard with it.  

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@eightieth She's pretty. Great skin colour.  

Answer 3

1 step further into this. Speed isn't a ranking signal. I've seen slow websites rank far too high. What if speed correlated to bounce rate which is a signal. Slow sites increase bounce. More prevalent on smaller brands as bigger brands can get away with some speed issues if they're the authority in that niche

Comments

@summerwood32 let me rephrase it, it may hurt if your site is slow, indirectly though. But it won't definitely boost your ranking if it's super fast

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@senegambia that's a much easier way to put it. I also see people obsess over Google page speed and think if your js is at the top you're going to lose ranking. It's not true! If your site is fast its fast

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@summerwood32 Why do you think bounce rate is a factor/signal?  

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@eightieth I think a lot of people mean "pogo-sticking" when they say "bounce rate"

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@mcnew That would definitely make more sense.  

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@eightieth it's still good to get terms right though. Keep on reminding

Answer 4

This is great information, but if slow loading causes a faster bounce rate then it would impact it wouldn't it? but if slow loading (for some reason) didn't bother people you'd be ok

Answer 5

It increases the bounce rate which affects conversions. It may be a minor ranking factor, but it is a major bottom-line factor for your client.  

Answer 6

Good SEOs optimize everything as much as possible because it equates to a much lower spend on things like links. It doesn't matter how much of an important factor it is, if it's a factor it should be optimized. As others have said there are also lots of UX / CRO factors for why this should be taken seriously. UX is also increasingly becoming important for SEO as well. Considering speed is so easy to improve there is no good reason to not do these basic optimizations in 2020.  

Comments

@luciolucita32  

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@luciolucita32 Agreed. But it shouldn't be the reason to compromise your content, like adding interactive media or embedding a video. Or even investing in a CDN and an expensive hosting like a VPS that you will never , traffic wise, need

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@senegambia there’s literally no reason your content should be to blame for a shit user experience and there’s no need to compromise. If removing content is your idea of speed optimisation then you’re doing it wrong. If speed wasn’t important, why would google invest so much time, energy and money into measuring it and providing you with tools to improve it.  

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@nupercaine They invest in tools because to keep us in their ecosystem. And good luck with optimizing a webpage that's 2000+ words with 10 images, a youtube video, a google map embedded, comments, and 3 different schema without a VPS and a CDN

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@senegambia we'll probably have to disagree on this one mate. To me, the aim of SEO isn't just to rank once. It's to rank for your highest converting terms and do everything in your power to stay there. If you rank #1 with your slow website today while your competitors at 2 - 10 are doing everything in their power to give their users a better experience, I'll bet my left leg they'll be smashing you after a few core updates. Ranking an unoptimised, lazy attempt at a website for a bunch of terms doesn't mean you outsmarted Google and definitely doesn't prove that speed is an irrelevant ranking factor. I don't see why they'd want or need us in their ecosystem. What they do want is to be able to spend less money crawling the web and they can only do that if we all make our websites faster. I don't know why you'd want to miss a quick win! (For what it's worth, there are thousands of developers out there who can make your website better - you don't have to spend all your own time trying to do it)

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@nupercaine May be i couldn't make my point. I do 100% agree that SEO and Ranking is a mean not a target. And beleive that every website shoud be fast for user experience and converting. I'm here talking about speed as an isloated factor which in my opinion not that important and won't break your SEO. Most ranking websites in 4 niches that i tried are loading slow.  

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@senegambia nothing in isolation will rank your website.  

Answer 7

Google has time and again emphasized on asking bloggers and business owners to produce content which is valuable i. e. written for the "audience" not for Google. They are making it more customer centric. So, its just common sense if page loads slower it is going to irritate potential customers and google would analyse that definitely. Hence given the focus of google and changes in its search algo, we think its very important as other ranking factors

Answer 8

This argument is honestly probably one of the stupidest in the community. Does it impact rankings? Maybe. Will people bounce off your page if it doesnt load quickly enough? Yup they sure will. What does that result in? Less visitors, less business, less revenue. It is the website equivalent of waiting on hold. If people want to be broke and right. Then fine, go for it.  

Comments

@torque2 Yes it was not for me, but i'm still the imbecile

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@senegambia I don’t think he is implying you’re an imbecile. But you are certainly coming off as solipsistic at this point

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Isn't bounce rate a ranking factor?  

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@carmelcarmela79 i'm not talking about bounce rate here, ust speed. You caould have higher bounce rate for many reasons which is speed one of them like your bad site architecture, bad site navigation, bad content, lack of call to action etc. I haven't mentioned bounce rate or UX. I'm talking about speed as a signal like links, content, URLs, etc

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@carmelcarmela79 No.  

Answer 9

It's TTFB that matters, which is your server response time + DNS & SSL. Beyond that, it's up for debate and pertains to case-by-case.  

Answer 10

That is a bit baised. Why? -It’s highly relevant for the user/conversions.  

Answer 11

It impact the ability to crawl more of your site. Forget about rankings - if they are spending too long downloading pages it could mean they aren’t crawling ALL your pages. If it doesn’t get crawled it isn’t getting indexed

Answer 12

This confirmed what i already suspected. i've been constantly frustrated that leading competitors' landing pages score in the single digits for speed, while mine is in the toasty upper 90's. i put a hell of a lot of tech work into getting those high 90's. these guys just had a lackey build em a wordpress theme and then paid an SEO to do SEO stuff. and they're killing it. speed doesnt matter. buying shit and knowing people who can post shit and getting links all over creation. that's what matters.  

Comments

Long load times are going to kill conversion rates though wouldn't you say?  

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Depends on your target audience, but yeah, they dont help. lazyloaded stuff makes all the difference there. a blurry image in 0. 5 seconds and a sharper one in 2 more is way better than waiting 2 seconds up front with no image. so i do that.  

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One thing is certain - the competitors with the slow-ass non-thought-out big "oy look at me i made a website" lookin big belongs on geocities type website? they get a shit ton more traffic. so it doesn't matter if their conversion suffers.  

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. i don't take things personal at all, BTW.  

Answer 13

Speed really does matters end of.  

Answer 14

For me the word is "reasonably" fast. Aiming for the 1/2 second page load seems to be a priority for many but it limits what you can do with a page massively. Some of the highest converting pages I've seen are relatively big clunky slow things. As long as it loads in reasonably OK time I feel its OK. 4 seconds and you're pushing it but under that I've never really seen any real-world difference.  

Answer 15

It's only a problem if your page is extremely slow. But in terms of correlation with higher rankings I see nothing at all. I've seen terribly slow sites rank on top & the content nor the link profile was better than the competition

Answer 16

Page speed does affect rankings  
https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/22865...-seo/

Answer 17

Matters a lot more on mobile devices

Answer 18

Pretty interesting that he improved the speed of the page from 40 seconds to loading in about 1. 5 seconds, but his bounce rate increased by 40%. So where are all those people constantly preaching that page speed has a dramatic impact on bounce rate?  

Comments

Also interesting that his page was optimized that poorly and still ranking on page one for a fairly competitive term. against other SEOs no less. Please tell me again how page speed is so vital.  

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@boatload stop spitting truths.  

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@boatload I don't know why so many people preach that given that they are constantly experiencing the opposite first hand. It's so simple, just take top ranking sites in different niches and test their speed

Answer 19

Page speed score is not what SEOs should worry about because its not time to first byte or it doesn't represent how fast the page is visible to the end user, gtmetrix showed total load time of 40 sec not initial load time which matters the most which can be checked with webpagetest. org For websites with less authority speed matters a lot more as compared to websites with more authority Now at the end of the day having a fast loading website is better than a slow loading one because users will probably convert more if optimizations have been made

Answer 20

Google stated this: we are obsessed with speed. To me it’s a big ranking signal, even if indirectly. Anything that affects how long a user stays on your site affects your SEO.  

Answer 21

My take is that my company currently ranks for "best local SEO company". We have known for years that website speed and performance affects user experience. User experience is a ranking factor. We consistently outrank any marketplace with this as a core value.  

Answer 22

There are ways to rank a 100 speed score page and there are ways to rank a 70-80 speed score page in the same exact position as the 100 - it all depends on what you are giving to your visitors  

Answer 23

These single factors can never be quantified or their impact measured and there is no point in being obsessive about it

Answer 24

Seo in pagespeed is Not valuable in 2 Weeks testing range! Make this test not with a single Page, use the whole Site, 300 visits is nothing, you can Only mesure that within yearly comparing. It Takes much more time, mostly over half an year, until you Can See all optimizations! This Video is realy dissppointing. Because ist is wrong. Like using one pill for a cure of cancer!  

Answer 25

Not at all irrelevant. I looked at 100, 000 sites and their page spead vs. rank- an important signal.  

Answer 26

Take a close look. Load changed but some other things stayed the same. Full post on this here  
https://members.internetmarketing.g...80521

Comments

FCP changed

Answer 27

Page Speed is a ranking factor

Comments

@eightieth not my words mate

Answer 28

Page speed affect ranking, but not based on what your score is. Scores dont matter. Slow website has high bounce rate and low ctr, those are major ranking factors.  

Answer 29

If your niche people are patient , Then Page Speed Does Not make any sense for ranking  

Answer 30

I totally agree. My site is slow, yet ranks well. It is only one factor.