Site Speed, is it worth it from a SEO point?

[followuk]

Hi,

I understand a site which loads quickly is greater for the user but how does site speed affect rankings?

I mean does Google log the speed pages load, the faster it loads the better the signal? So say I have a page which loads in 1.5sec would Google 'Rate' the site better if it loaded in say 0.8sec?

Thanks.

[LesleyPaone]

In short, yes. I cannot remember which article or which video I saw it in, but one of the guys from google was interviewed and someone said the term "search engine" to him. He replied that Google likes to think of themselves as an "experience engine". That being said, they strive to provide the sites that promote the best user experience. A slow site does not provide that. I would be willing to bet, 10 times out of 10, two sites that were equal in every other aspect, the faster one would rank higher.

[cibble03]

Hi,

I have had great results from speeding up pages of my site and I also spending quite a lot of time, money and effort keeping my pages as fast as possible. If you use tools like GTmetrix and google provides tools in GWMT you will see not only a decrease in pageload time but a boost in organic rankings and an overall better user experience. I agree with Prestashop 100%.

[Travis_Bailey]

Yes, Google has been fairly overt when it comes to application performance. Just to give you a little insight into how important Google thinks speed is, they cut any internal application if it's even slightly sluggish. And further, wouldn't you think it's significant when they display that they've delivered nine billion results in .0000023454355 seconds?

There are a lot of easy, quick, wins you can have in under five minutes. Here's a couple to start you off.

GZip Compression:

Odds are you're using one of these server flavors. This is a very quick way to increase speed. Just be very careful when editing/updating .htaccess. The slightest bit of white space or a syntax error will take the site down. Your host may even be able to do this for you in some fashion, but a lot of them shy away from even supporting .htaccess. So once you start down that road, it's lonely a one - save for some forums.

Reduce Image File Size:

There are tons of ways to reduce image file size without a lot of hassle. Some will losslessly compress (no reduction in image quality) other forms are 'lossy'.

TinyPNG (Lossy)

Smush.it (Lossy)

Google Page Speed Tool (Lossless - In Chrome Dev Console ctrl+shift+j, yo)

There are a ton of other ways, but these are some easy ways to get a faster page.

[benjaminmarcinc]

Not only is is worth it from a search engine point of view but also for your visitors, they want the site to load fast or else they might leave. Check out google speed test https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ to see what you can do to make your website faster.

[CleverPhD]

One more here and just because I wanted to clarify this further on what Benjamin mentioned.   Yes, site speed is important for SEO and we can go through all the reasons.  The real reason you want good site speed is that you make more money as your users are happier.   People who come to your site are more likely to convert the faster your site is, regardless of if they came from Google, Bing, Organic, Paid, direct, etc etc.

Amazon has actually calculated this.  They estimate that a page load slowdown of 1 seconds would cost Amazon 1.6 billion in sales each year.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1825005/how-one-second-could-cost-amazon-16-billion-sales

This type of research has been done at many other companies, including Google.   If you are trying to measure the impact of site speed, don't look just at ranking, look at conversion. There is where the real money is.

[spencerhjustice]

One easy way that I've found to help with pagespeed is with cloudflare's free subscription. It does a lot to speed up your site, such as auto minifying, css, html and javascript. It also caches your pages and greatly reduces server response times. It also does some other stuff and offers security features which is another benefit.