How Important is Page Load Speed to My Store’s SEO?
With the advancement of technology that has been seen over the last couple of years, it is no surprise that we have seen the war in the business front increasingly being fought online, rather than through brick and mortar stores. This has seen more businesses opening online stores and running online marketing campaigns in order to get ahead of their competition. In the online world however, page load speed is a very important metric. It is basically the measure of how fast the content that is on your page loads and it shouldn’t be confused with site speed, as is discussed in detail over at mtglion.com. Page load speed is obviously important as waiting as a page loads images or as a “loading” message is displayed can put off someone from accessing said page. So, having established the fact that page load speed is important, the question that still remains unanswered is how important is it? Well, this article will look to delve deeper into this and look to have this question answered.
One of the key things that will enable us decipher how important page load speed is to your store’s SEO is its impact on user experience. It is no secret that poor load page speeds will have a negative impact on user experience as far as your store is concerned and it will ultimately have an impact on its SEO. This means that you have to ensure that your site loads fast, otherwise it is likely that due to poor user experience, folks will bounce from your site and consequently your rankings will surfer as far as Google is concerned, as is discussed by the subject matter experts over at mtglion.com. This means that, without having to reinvent your SEO strategy, having high page load speeds will enable you to get better rankings as far as search results are concerned which shows just how important speed is important. Apart from user experience, another way through which page load speed can affect your ranking as far as search results are concerned is due to the fact that low speeds mean that search engines like Google will only crawl fewer pages especially as this is dictated by the allocated crawl budget, which will eventually affect your ranking as far as search result are concerned, further highlighting the importance of page load speed as far as your store’s SEO is concerned.
Gone are the days when all you needed for your site to rank well was great written content. Nowadays, as much as text is still important since search engines will still crawl the text on a page, the online shopping experience is more visual and as such multimedia is increasingly key, as is discussed by the experts over at mtglion.com. This means that your site will need great videos and pictures in order to boost the online shopping experience of customers visiting your store. These multimedia content may have an impact on page load speed and as such it is important to optimize file size as far as they are concerned while at the same time taking care not to go overboard with the optimization and end up reducing the visual quality of said multimedia. You can also further aid page load speeds by hosting videos off your website on sites such as Vimeo and YouTube. This will enable your stores earn top rankings by both having great multimedia as well as quick page load speeds. It is also important to note how important mobile is as far as e-commerce is concerned nowadays. Google and other search engines are putting a lot of weight as far as site ranking is concerned on mobile compatibility. Mobile as we all know is big on page load speeds, with folks likely to bounce form your page if you have low speeds. With approximately 50% of e-commerce buying happening on mobile, and its link with speed, it is clear that page load speed is very important for your store’s SEO.
Having established that page load speed is very important as far as a stores SEO is concerned, we can take a quick look at how one can be able to improve their speeds. As has been mentioned above, one of the ways is by optimizing images, with making use of a content distribution network, CDN, being another way to boost speeds. Sometimes the only way to improve page load speeds is by redesigning your store, which should be done by a developer that understands load speed management to ensure that you get the best speeds possible. Other ways to improve page load speeds include minifying JavaScript or CSS, using browser caching, reducing HTTP and file requests, running WordPress speed optimizations, using static content and many others, all of which are discussed in detail by the experts over at mtglion.com.
From the above discussion, it is clear that page load speed is very important for your store’s SEO rankings and as such you should ensure you have great speeds. Remember, there is more to be found on this and other topics over at mtglion.com, so check them out.