Website Page Speed is about making sure your site visitors don’t get frustrated with waiting for your site to load.
Website speed is one of the factors that Google takes into consideration when ranking sites. If your website is slow and offers a poor user experience, your site could be left out of relevant search results.
Page speed does play a role in your SEO, but you should focus on your human visitor when it comes to how fast your site loads for them.
Slow Internet Connections
There are still lots of areas here in northern Michigan with poor Internet coverage.
You need to think about users dealing with slower connections and broadband speeds who are trying to view your website.
How Fast Should a Page Load?
Best practice is three seconds or less, but most websites average a 6-second load time.
And mobile is not the same as desktop. The average web page takes 87% longer to load on mobile vs. desktop. Mobile devices have slower processors and they have different rules for loading styles.
Keep Your Web Pages Concise
The smaller and more concise your web page content is, the faster your pages will load for your visitors.
Step back and ask yourself:
- Do you need so many web pages?
- Can you merge content into fewer pages that make more sense for your visitors?
Reduce the Number of Plugins
If you have a WordPress website, your site uses certain plugins that add features and functions. Sometimes we get excited by fancy plugins that add snazzy features we don’t really need.
The more plugins you have installed, the more resources needed to run them which slows down your website noticeably. Only install the plugins you absolutely need and remove those you are no longer using.
The typical website visitor expects your web pages to load quickly (3 seconds!). By speeding up your website, you won’t risk losing a new visitor to your competition.
