How Important is Page Speed for SEO?   

Everybody that uses the internet wants pages to load faster than they do, even as internet speeds have increased dramatically over the years. But did you know that page speed is important for SEO purposes, too?

Page speed is a critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to successful SEO. All the major search engines (especially Google) calculate how long it takes your page to load – and how likely it is for visitors to click the back button if it takes too long – when factoring in how highly you should be ranked on their site.

If you’re serious about getting the best possible rank you can (and with how competitive search engine optimization is these days you need to be), you want to make sure that your page absolutely flies.

Use the inside information below to help you pull that off!

How Important is Page Speed for SEO?

Google themselves have been very open, very honest, and very transparent about how damaging slow loading pages are for your search engine optimization.

Think about that for a second.

Google, which has a notorious reputation for remaining pretty tight lipped about anything and everything that could give websites in advantage in ranking their pages, is telling you specifically that slow loading pages will cripple your results.

That alone should be more than enough to push you in the direction of speeding things up ASAP!

Now, we’re not going to tell you that page loading times are the most important thing you can do when it comes to optimizing your site for search engine rankings.

But if you are ignoring optimizing your pages (or even just overlooking it) you’re probably losing out on higher ranking positions you could capture effortlessly with just a couple of simple tweaks.

Take the time to optimize your site for speed.

You won’t regret it!

How to Speed Up Your Site

Now that we have squared all of that away, let’s dig a little bit deeper into the nuts and bolts of what you can do – right now, even – to speed up your site loading time and get yourself better ranking results almost instantly.

Lighten Resource Load

The very first thing you want to do is lighten the resource load that your website puts on your web host.

This means stripping out as much extra code as possible. It means streamlining the structure and “architecture” that your website is built on top of.

It also might mean switching over to a lighter weight Content Management System (CMS) that prioritizes page loading times. It might mean getting rid of – or compressing – some of the media that you’re using, too.

Everything you can do to shave weight on your website and lighten its resource load will help speed things up.

Image Compression is Key

Image compression is a huge part of proper optimization, and the best thing is you won’t lose a whole lot of image fidelity if you go about compressing things correctly.

Today’s HD images (even those captured on smartphones) can be pretty chunky files. Large image files are always going to bog down your website.

Luckily, though, there are a whole host of tools out there – including a bunch of free ones – you can use to compress your images, reduce file sizes, and not lose any image fidelity along the way.

Leverage those tools all the time!

Tag in Browser Caching

Browser caching is another powerful tool you can leverage to dramatically increase the load time on your website, allowing you to store temporary information (including information regarding JavaScript, your stylesheets, and even compressed image files) so that these don’t have to be loaded every single time someone visits.

Take advantage of browser caching!

Leverage CDNs

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are quickly becoming pretty popular tools and services to help people lighten the load on their websites.

Basically a network of servers located all over the world that store static versions of your websites in multiple locations, CDNs dramatically speed up the load time of your website depending on where someone is accessing it from.

The services are often pretty inexpensive, safe and secure, and are right out there on the cutting edge of delivering a faster site to your visitors.

Finding this all too confusing to manage yourself? Check out our SEO Services for a complete hands-off approach to your websites SEO.

Consider Moving Web Hosts

Of course, if you really want to take speed to the next level you may want to consider moving Web hosts altogether.

Not all web hosts are created equally. Not all web hosts provide you with the full “horsepower” of their hosting infrastructure, either.

Finding lightning fast hosts isn’t all that difficult today, though.

The top options advertise how fast they are pretty prominently. Most reviewers are open and upfront about how fast different hosts are, too.

If you’re going to have a particularly complex website (or a very media rich one) you want to make sure that your web host is built with high performance in mind.

You might want to jump ship if your web host is holding you back!

Work with Top SEO Experts to Speed Things Up Even More

Top Toronto SEO experts can explain how important page speed is for search engine optimization, but they are also going to be able to help you speed things up with the kinds of “insider tips and tricks” only those that live and breathe search engine optimization know about.

Lean on these expert services to give you that extra bump you need if you’ve tried everything else and your site still isn’t loading as quickly as you like.

You might be surprised at how well optimized they can dial things in for you (and how quickly they can make it happen, too).

Closing Thoughts

Page load times are a critical part of the search engine optimization puzzle, even if fast loading pages aren’t enough alone to get you to the top of the results for the most competitive Google keywords.

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Speaking of keywords, I should share our How to Choose the Best Keywords for SEO article with you. Page speed isn't the only important thing in SEO!

Take the time to really optimize your site from top to bottom, building a site for speed and performance.

Think about how the media you add is going to impact performance as well, and always try to capitalize on new tools designed to compress your site without ruining it at the same time.

It doesn’t take a whole lot to tweak your site settings to see that search engine optimization bump from faster load times, though!

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