What Does Google Say About Website Speed and SEO?

Currently, site speed and its relevance to search rankings is something that all website owners are curious about.

That’s because website speed is one of Google’s ranking factors. And although you can easily get your website’s performance issues fixed by shifting to the best web hosting company, it’s important to understand how your website’s speed actually impacts its rankings.

What Page Speed is Optimum for Higher Search Rankings?

Site performance assessments are easily accessible thanks to free tools like PageSpeed Insights and Google Lighthouse. However, John Mueller stated in a December 2018 hangout that there are many different criteria that go into speed ranking considerations.

Even Google still provides cautions regarding how these tools should be utilized.

The majority of publishers are aware of practical strategies to increase website speed. But many are curious about the ranking variables that Google Search considers to be most crucial.

The majority of Google's suggestions are purposefully ambiguous since that is the key question.

Recently, John Mueller and Martin Splitt of Google's webmaster team sat down to respond to Twitter concerns from search engine optimizers regarding site performance and SEO (recorded in November 2019).

Where does Google acquire such data from?

They mostly obtain information from two sources. One the one hand, they make an effort to extrapolate lab results to the theoretical pace of a page. Real field data from people who have attempted to use such pages makes up the second type of data used.

The data from that field is comparable to the data from the Chrome User Experience report.

We have emphasized to publishers that there is no magic barrier for site performance that Google looks for. To that end, if the TTI for your website is 20 seconds or more, you should probably look into and fix the issue.

Get reliable web hosting from the best web hosting company for website optimization.

Cnn.com is among my favorite illustrations of the discrepancy between performance audit results and actual user experience.

How Significant Are Google PageSpeed Insights Results for SEO?

John: We have a number of instruments that can measure various things. I can see how this would be perplexing at times. These instruments generally measure things in slightly different ways.

The low-hanging fruit on your website can be found by using these various technologies and the data you get back from them. You may quickly enhance these to speed up your page.

Martin: "Also, the tools are focused differently."

Martin: Utilize the tool that provides you with the most insight into the low-hanging fruit for the audience you are attempting to persuade.

C-level? A different marketer? anybody on the technical side? You might select different speed testing tools as a result of these various audiences.

Splitt refers to frequently practicable actions including getting web hosting from the best web hosting company that will objectively boost website speed, even if only little and which some of these tools will return to you in a performance audit.

What is The Most Reliable Metric of Page Speed?

Martin: The metric is site-specific. FMP/FCP is more crucial than FID or TTI if all you have is a website on which people are viewing the information.

FID or TII is likely more crucial if the online application is extremely interactive and you want users to be able to dive right in and take action.

Everything is in context. The metrics that are most pertinent to your site will depend on its nature. The best web hosting company helps increase page speeds if you’re looking to improve your site.

Beyond that, knowing your visitors, their connections, and how their experience is impacted by devices and connection quality will help you determine for sure if site performance is actually having an impact on their experience and perhaps your rankings.

Are Site Speed Rankings Problematic?

Martin: These scores have a flaw in that they oversimplify the situation.

Martin: These measurements are all measuring various things. They are attempting to comprehend what a user could think upon accessing the page. A score is a quick method to assess everything overall, but it's not comprehensive.

These results essentially provide you a range.

Putting some of these performance audit recommendations into practice will provide some concrete, incremental advantages. However, Google has stated that they only penalize incredibly sluggish websites.

From a user's perspective, site speed not a speed tool is more crucial. Reliable hosting from the top web hosting company benefits site speed which makes this a crucial aspect as well.

Speed is a complex subject, and in order to make the appropriate decisions, you need to understand what you're measuring.

Because of this, Google does not just provide a single figure as the target score.

Does The Ideal Site Speed Have a Straightforward Answer?

Martin: 'No. This occurs because speed cannot be expressed as a single, straightforward quantity.

For instance, if I'm painting swiftly, yet my application is all about interaction.

Say the application is a messenger. I can rapidly view the message history, but when I try to respond to a recent message, it takes me 20 seconds to tap into the input form and begin typing. Is that fast? Absolutely not.

Is it really that crucial that I may contact you within the first 10 seconds of seeing a lengthy blog post? Absolutely not.

What numerical representation could you give those two things? I don't.

A performance audit's output number is not as significant as actual site speed as experienced by users.

Focus your optimization efforts on the user experience and how quickly users can perceive your website.

Google's crawlers will notice this behavior over time and your search rankings will suffer if it takes your site more than 30 seconds before a user can access the content, causing visitors to leave your site and return to the SERP.

Google's Upcoming Algorithm Changes: Will Site Speed Matter?

Martin: Improving site speed will get easier, but we'll never get to the point where you can optimize for a score and call it a day. Since the subject is so vast, it is practically difficult to reduce it to just one figure.

Consequently, although some will consider a bigger picture, the more knowledgeable individuals may continue to pay attention to minute details and count milliseconds.

Although browsers are working hard to make websites faster overall, it is up to you or a web hosting company in the UK as the publisher to research what is important to you, your audience, and your website.

In two words, we might sum up Google's recommendations from Martin Splitt and John Mueller on how site speed affects SEO: "It depends."

By Websouls Content Team - 31 Oct 2022