SEO and the need for page speed now

It takes the right approach to bring together SEO and page speed for stellar results

According to Google, more than 50 percent of its users will surf away from a page that takes longer than three seconds to loan. When your site is too slow, the Google algorithm penalizes you in search rankings, most profoundly in mobile search results. You want to reach customers, and Google wants searchers to find what they want. If your site takes too long to load, users won’t wait - you need to get up to speed.

User Experience and Google Web Vitals Update

With the user experience in mind, Google prioritized page speed with its recent Web Vitals update to help site owners quantify site speeds and other important metrics. The word is out, and the competition might already be using Core Web Vitals to boost their site speed. Recently, a Google spokesperson revealed in 2021 that Core Web Vitals metrics would be prime ranking factors to gain position in search engines. Start optimizing now, so your site is ready.

Google’s new Core Web Vitals make it possible to develop a more user-friendly site. Three crucial aspects of the user experience get tracked, including loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the loading time. LCP measures the time it takes for the page content to download and be interactive. The largest block of context or image within the user’s view is measured, such as background images, video poster images, and paragraph tags. Ideally, LCP occurs within 2.5 seconds or less.
• First Input Delay (FID) metric measures interactivity, tracking the delay between user input and site response time. Consider when users click on a link, it can appear instantly or lag. The goal is an instant connection, which means sites passing this test have an FID of 100 milliseconds or less.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) keeps travel of visual stability with Google manipulating page movement to measure each of the elements shift to come up with this metric. An example is when a user tries to click a link, but a shift in movement renders it impossible. Measurements are taken in fractions. Sites with the right CLS metrics should be below 0.1.

Aim to reach the 75th percentile of page loads across mobile and desktop devices for all three of these Core Web Vitals metrics. The goal is to provide a superior interactive experience for users without lags or shifts. Tools such as the Chrome User Experience Report are used to measure this aspect of the user experience.

Learning About Load Times

Google also measures various other speed-related factors to keep in mind when considering SEO, such as:

• The server response is the time it takes for the server to respond to a request for the site. Type ping at the command prompt, then the site’s IP address, and enter to determine the time it took the server to respond.
• First meaningful paint is the time it takes for helpful content to appear. Speed it up by improving the user interface rendering, including a manifest file for directors, and adding HTTPs with a redirect to it.
• The speed index is the average time it takes to display the site’s visual elements. The goal is measuring the progress of a web page loading between specified markers while considering the percentage of elements that remain unloaded.
• First contentful paint is how long it takes for the content to appear once a site starts to load. If you don’t hit the 75th percentile, consider less JavaScript work, compress text-based assets, and HTTP caching.
• First CPU idle is when users start to interact with the site, with 0 - 2.2 seconds being excellent, 2.2 - 5 seconds fast, and more than 7 seconds is slow. Time to interactive is when your site is entirely ready for user interaction. Figuring out the time to interactive happens in three stages. First, choose a starting point, such as First Contentful Paint, then search for a window when the network stays stable for 5 seconds. Then, look to the end of the long task to figure out the time to interactive.
• Max potential first input delay is the longest wait time a user experiences, which can be improved quickly, such as choosing images that take less time to load.

Factors Influencing Speed

With all this in mind, it matters how a site is hosted. Choosing a WordPress site versus a site hosted by BlueHost could mean different results. The uptime or downtime that server has plays a role in site load time, so research before making a decision.

Slower load times may also occur when relying on a CMS or working with an out-of-the-box site. For example, working within a Wix template could mean the site will have to run significant JavaScript before it can fully parse the site’s HTML, increasing the site load time.

Web developers continue to debate about out-of-the-box website hosts, while WordPress CMS continues to be an industry leader for those who do not want to use their own server. Countless customization options and robust content management service make WordPress the leading choice for top corporations worldwide.

Speed Solutions Based on Images

Significant factors in slow page speed include high-resolution graphics, photos, and videos. Lazy loading techniques can be used to allow images to populate as users navigate to relevant sections of the site instead of requiring them all to load before the site becomes fully interactive. By loading essential content first, the reportable load time can improve. Ways to get Googlebot to see all the page content include:

• Load content when it is visible in the viewport using a JavaScript library supporting this action, and IntersectionObserver API and a polyfill, and native lazy-loading for iframes and images.
• Support paginated loading when using infinite scrolling

Use image caches when possible, which is helpful when repeat users return to the site. Cached images are stored in the user’s browsing history and come from the browser rather than the server when the site is loaded a second time. Page speed increases, and here are some tips:

• Save on site speed by converting graphics to .gifs, regular photos to .jpgs, and images that must easily scale as .png files.
• Compress image sizes to 50 kb or fewer for on-page photos, and 100 kb for a page header.

Page Speed and Coding Changes

Site coding impacts how quickly it loads. Remote unnecessary JavaScript and any code that requires external interaction. All of these will slow the site down and make for negative user experience.

Keeping the site code simple reduces loading times, so avoid roundabout coding methods. Use the most basic approach possible to achieve the ultimate coding goals. Sites with outdated code for features not displayed anymore are examples of where code can be cut.

Another way to cut down site load times is by consolidating site pages. Check the site metrics to determine which pages get the least traffic. Could information on these pages be moved to another page with more traffic? Is the content duplicative on another page? Eliminating these pages and the code that accompanies them can reduce site load times. Quick updates to instantly improve page speed include:

• Leveraging browser caching
• Using a content distribution network
• Enabling compression
• Removing render-blocking JavaScript
• Optimizing images, as discussed above
• Leveraging browser caching
• Reducing redirects
• Minifying HTML, JavaScript, and CSS

Test page speed monthly, or at the least, quarterly, through Google. Keep an eye on load times and how they change over time, and regularly check in on Core Web Vitals. Be mindful of whether shorter or longer times might be related to recent changes made to the site. Load times could also be related to the host or server, so stay up-to-date on their reported speed metrics.

With an ongoing eye on page speed, SEO also improves. Best of all, the user experience is enhanced, and visitors want to come back for more. Focusing on page speed today ensures sites are ready as page speed becomes increasingly important in 2021.