Page Speed & SERPS
-
What impact does page speed have on rankings in the search engine?
If I have a Site that is heavy with Pictures, Onsite videos and various scripts that would ultimately be of good use to a viewer but takes time to load.
VS
A Site that has pictures that are fully optimized for the web or eliminated to save on load time, Videos that are hosted on Sites like VIMEO or You Tube and eliminate scripts where possible and use css3. Note the site loads faster and is better for mobil but doesn't have the same feel of the first site but is useful to the user.
Now let's say that both sites are virtual twins in terms of their link profile, age, content quality, location and citations.
Will one rank better because of load time?
It's the quest for creating the ultimate site for users while delivering it within the fastest time possible.
-
Hi,
All the answers are just amazing! I just want to share my 2 cents on this topic.
If both sites have the same link juice, age, content quality, location and citations and only the load speed is different, I believe the site that loads faster will rank better.
In one of Google Webmasters Blog article, they mentioned that they are obsessed with load speed and do use Site Load Speed as a signal in their search ranking algorithms. It may not weight heavily compared to other signals but for 2 virtual identical sites, the one that loads faster wins.
Furthermore, as Darin mentioned, if your site loads faster then Google will also be able to crawl more of your pages, if more pages are crawled, then more of your pages will have the chance of appearing on the search engine result page.
Also quoting from Google Webmaster Blog: "We encourage you to start looking at your site's speed (the tools above provide a great starting point) — not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone's experience on the Internet."
-
You might also want to check out https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/ to see if there are any suggestions Google can give you to make your site faster.
-
Good read on the subject => http://www.seomoz.org/blog/15-tips-to-speed-up-your-website
-
CDN- Content Delivery Network
-
There was a Google Webmaster Blog Post back in 2010 talking about this so I would read up on it.
Basically, I personally don't feel a slower page will rank worse unless it's obviously super slow. (ie, Flash or 5 second load times) The key is that Google manages how it crawls your site depending on load time so that it doesn't take up too much of your server when it crawls. So if your pages crawl faster, Google can crawl more of them at one time.
I have seen some of my sites rank faster when I did a few things to them to speed them up but I think it had more to do with on-page metrics and UX and not necessarily with load time.
Here are some pointers for your sites speed.
-
For pages that have a lot of photos (large ones especially) I would have those photos on another site and load it from there. Web browsers can load from multiple domains at the same time, saving a lot of load time
-
Make sure your css is in .css files and not embeded directly on each page (same goes for javascript and .js files)
-
Set up cache on your server.
To answer your question, I don't think one or the other will rank over the other because of load time. But, remember, there is a point when your load time becomes to slow and the UX is hurt and therefore visitors don't stay on the page and leave. That would hurt the rankings.
-
-
Thank you for your response. What are the best ways to minimize page load times? What are the biggest offenders of page load times? Finally, what is CDN?
-
I want to start off by saying I'm a huge stickler for page load speed. Not only is it important to SEO but it is even more important for UX -- especially with bounce rate/conversion rate.
Again, this is all hypothetical, but if the two sites are identical in all other aspects, the page that has the fastest load time would rank better.
Just as a point of reference, using Vimeo/YouTube isn't the only other solution to making your site load faster. You can/should consider things like a CDN -- Especially for video if nothing else. Also, video itself shouldn't slow down page load time as the video itself shouldn't load until someone clicks the "play button"
-
I want to start off by saying I'm a huge stickler for page load speed. Not only is it important to SEO but it is even more important for UX -- especially with bounce rate/conversion rate.
Again, this is all hypothetical, but if the two sites are identical in all other aspects, the page that has the fastest load time would rank better.
Just as a point of reference, using Vimeo/YouTube isn't the only other solution to making your site load faster. You can/should consider things like a CDN -- Especially for video if nothing else. Also, video itself shouldn't slow down page load time as the video itself shouldn't load until someone clicks the "play button"
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Photos or Video Best for Landing Pages?
My real estate brokerage firm is promoting a listing via advertising on LinkedIn. The advertising links to a landing page: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/MidtownLawOfficeSublet3300SFBelowMarket Rather than photos, the landing page has a 1 minute video. So far we have had about 10 visits to the page. Visitors leave the landing page after a few seconds. So they are not looking at the video. Would it be better to replace the video with photos? Or is engagement generally better with video? My thinking is that business owners may not have the patience or the time for a video and they would more likely have the time and willingness to click on photos. I would be willing to test this further, but at $5/click it could get costly! Any thoughts?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kingalan1
Thanks,
Alan Rosinsky1 -
Is there a sweet spot for compressing images for load speed?
i am looking to improve the load speed on my site (it's very poor at the moment) but I am trying to figure out how much I should compress the images on my page by. Is there a sweet spot between making the images as small as possible without losing image quality. I know that this might differ depending on a number of factors by any advice would be very helpful. Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | cbarron2 -
Is anyone aware of stats stating how many people abandon pages the deeper they get in a site?
For example, let's say someone enters via a landing page, and instead of having a form there is a button to a form. What percentage of people will click the button and fill out the form vs if the form was right there on the page? Basically, I am trying to figure out what percentage of users do websites lose for every click a user makes on the site.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Firestarter-SEO0 -
Tracking Adwords users who sumbit a contact form after clicking through my Landing page.
I have a user, Jane, who comes to my landing page through an AdWords campaign. She click off my landing page, browses the website, then submits a contact form on one of the other pages on the site. My problem is when I receive the email from the contact form, there is no identification that this user came through adwords. If she had submitted the contact form on my landing page this wouldn't be a problem, but she submitted the form from elsewhere on the site. I know that I can see a NUMBER of how many goal conversions were achieved this way in Analytics. This is not what I want. I need something to identify it on the CONTACT FORM so that the intake staff in my office can credit that lead to the correct campaign. Any idea on how to achieve this. Technically, I am using the latest version of Wordpress and the Contact Form 7 plug-in. I can change plug-ins if needed.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | McShaneFirm0 -
Should I link from an optimised product image to the product page from a blog post?
If I am writing a blog post about a product, or a number of products, and I'm including optimised images of the product, should I link from the images to the product page in the shop? Usually I remove links from images as they lead visitors to a simple image page but could it be worth linking from an optimised image to a product? Thanks in advance.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | the_wildman0 -
Multiple Thank You pages with one Contact form - PPC
Hi everyone,
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Carla_Dawson
I am running a PPC (Google Adwords Campaign) and it is pretty big. I have about 25 landing pages each with a Contact Form. I need the contact form to go to a unique thank you page for each landing page to measure conversions via Google Adwords. In other words I need the contact form on submission to redirect to a specific and unique thank you page that I can define. The contact form needs to be the same for all landing pages to avoid having to produce 25 landing pages. I am ok with producing 25 Example
http://www.maindomain.com/landing-page-1 redirects tohttp://www.maindomain.com/thank-you-1 http://www.maindomain.com/landing-page-2 redirects tohttp://www.maindomain.com/thank-you-2 http://www.maindomain.com/landing-page-3 redirects tohttp://www.maindomain.com/thank-you-3 Can someone help me with this?
Thanks https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/0 -
Is putting an email address in the page title a good idea?
As our Contact Us page title was a little short I added in sales@example.com So "Contact us : Sales@example.com" We don't get a lot of spam and it hasn't noticeable increased since we did this. Tynt suggests that a reasonable number of people have copied and pasted the email - presumably to contact us Is it worth experimenting with further or a waste of time?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Zippy-Bungle1 -
How do I get Google to rank the right page?
My site ranks #1 for Arabic Interpreting on Google UK. This great, but it's ranking my home page rather than the my specific Arabic Interpreting page. The home page shouldn't really rank for this term as it has very little connection with this exact term. This means that while the site ranks great, the conversion is pretty much zero. How can I get Google to rank the page I've optimised for this term? I know the ranking will no doubt slip but may the conversions will be better. Can you help please?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | GlobalLingo0