When we say Page Speed, what we are really talking about is how fast a webpage loads its content. Some people often confuse it with site speed but it is actually different. Site speed is the average loading for several pages on a website while page speed is the actual time to fully load the content of a certain webpage. Why is this important for Google marketing you ask, Let’s take a look.
In 2010, Google made an announcement that site speed would have an impact on the ranking of searches and that the content loading speed will be a factor. The main focus of this is to improve user experience. The slower the page content loads, the poorer the user experience. That is why Google decided to penalize slow loading websites. As you have noticed above, Google mention site speed and not page speed. But according to the definition we mentioned above, site speed is the average loading time that each page in your website has. Thus, optimizing page speed for each page in your website plays an important factor in Google search ranking if you really think about it.
Research Says…
According to researches, Google is measuring the time it takes to load the first byte when they look at page speed. Also, when you talk about slow page speed that would also mean search engines will crawl less pages which would affect the indexing of your pages. You might be wondering what is crawling. Well, crawling is a process in which Google uses a Spider bot (small robot) to automatically scan your website using links from page to page. It follows the links found in your website. Once it finishes crawling, your site is indexed. Indexing is Google’s way of adding your site in the search results.
Page speed is often neglected or overlooked by web developers but is actually the first thing that a site visitor notices. If you are the same as me, I really avoid trying to go to sites that load very slowly. So, in actual fact, page speed is one of the main factors that keep your site visitors satisfied and happy especially if we’re talking about an e-commerce site. Think of it this way, if a customer is browsing your website looking for a product to buy, but somehow loses interest because your catalog takes forever to load, then you would have lost a potential sale for the simple reason your customer became impatient. You see, simple things like that really do matter. When that keeps happening, not only are you losing sales, you will also lose site visitors which will adversely affect your ranking in searches. Think about this for a moment and you really can see the direct correlation of page speed and your digital marketing results.
Causes of Slow Page Loading Time
There are many causes of slow page speeds. Large images and ads can be a factor as well as hosting services. If you go about it the smart way, the first thing you need to invest in is a good hosting service as that will really matter a lot. There are a lot of fixes you can do in order to optimize the page speed and make sure you maximize your marketing strategy. Try to get a hold of an expert who can help you with that.
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