PageSpeed Vs Page Size
-
Hi,
We all know that Google doesnt like slow loading pages, fair enough! However, for one of my websites, user interactivity is key to its success. Now each of my pages are fairly large sized (ranges in the order or 1.8 to 2.5 MB) because it has a lot of pictures, css and at times some Java script elements.
However, I have tried to ensure that the code is optimized - for example html minified and compressed, caching enables, images optimized and served through CDN, etc. In spite of high page size, my GTMetrix PageSpeed score is 93+ for most pages.
However, the number of requests served is 100+ and page loading time is 4.5s + as per GTMetrix and Pingdom.
My question is - should this matter from an SEO perspective. Is google likely to penalize me for high loading time even though I am serving highly optimized pages? I really dont want to cut down on the user interactiveness of my website unless I have to from an SEO perspective.
Please suggest. Here is my homepage, just as to give you an idea of what i am talking about:
-
Thanks Cyrus and Max,
Very good answer and I am going to work as per your suggestions
-
As Max said, from a ranking perspective, Time to First Byte seems to be the most important factor. The same author of that post offered some tips to improving time to first byte: http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte
Oftentimes, you simply have a lot of assets to load and it's difficult to cut anything back. In these cases, the order that things load becomes increasingly important for user experience (asynchronous java script, for example).
Regardless, doing everything you can to improve speed and checking with Google Page Speed Insights is usually the best advice. I've never, ever seen a website where improving speed performance didn't help with traffic metrics (wether rankings or engagement) so I believe it's an investment worth making.
-
What google really cares about is the TTFB (Time To First Byte), to check it just head for GWT, in crawl stats.
To date the general consensus is above 1s is bad and google could penalize you, below .5s is good and google could improve your ranking a little bit.
Google suggest using webpagetest to check a website performance: if you run the test for your website you will se the TTFB is not that bad: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141124_MF_14DY/
Your overall load time is 10s and I agree is too much, it's supposedly worse your user experience, increasing your bounce rate and alienating some of your visitors. You should work to improve it, webpagetest suggest to compress images and use leverage browser cache, which are good suggestions.
Analyze closely the waterfall to investigate further and identify other areas of interventions.
-
Hi there,
I think it would improve page load if the youtube video was the last to load.
Hope it helps you.
-
You are right! Which is why I dont want to compromise on usability. Thanks for your response
-
give it some time! It should be ok. The main issue with speed should be if the users are fine with it. Think of people before SEO and you ll be fine!
-
Thanks for your response, but the images are possibly as optimized as they could be. I use ImageOptim for Mac to optimize them, they are all jpegs (stripped from all metadata) and enabled for (mild) lossy to WebP on supported browsers.
Do you feel there might be anything else that I could do?
-
Am sure you could work on the optimization a bit more, especially of the images.
none the less if you require the same structure and you are unable to change the size then I would not worry so much about it. Having a fast website is only one of the hundred of different factors that affect SEO. Just work on the other factors and it will be fine!
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
-
Webshop landing pages and product pages
Hi, I am doing extensive keyword research for the SEO of a big webshop. Since this shop sells technical books and software (legal books, tax software and so on), I come across a lot of very specific keywords for separate products. Isn't it better to try and rank in the SERP's with all the separate product pages, instead of with the landing (category) pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Pagination new pages vs parameters
I'm working on a site that currently handles pagination like this cars-page?p=1 cars-page?p=2 In webmaster tools I can then tell ?p= designates pagination However I have a plugin I want to add to fix other seo issues, among those it adds rel="prev" rel="next" and it modifies the pagination to this cars-page-1.html cars-page2.html Notice I lost the parameter here and now each page is a different page url, pagination is no longer a parameter. I will not longer be able to specify the pagination parameter in webmaster tools. Would this confuse google as the pagination is no longer a parameter and there will now be multiple urls instead of one page with parameters? My gut says this would be bad, as I haven't seen this approach often on ecommerce site, but I wanted to see what the community thought?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
How will canonicalizing an https page affect the SERP-ranked http version of that page?
Hey guys, Until recently, my site has been serving traffic over both http and https depending on the user request. Because I only want to serve traffic over https, I've begun redirecting http traffic to https. Reviewing my SEO performance in Moz, I see that for some search terms, an http page shows up on the SERP, and for other search terms, an https page shows. (There aren't really any duplicate pages, just the same pages being served on either http or https.) My question is about canonical tags in this context. Suppose I canonicalize the https version of a page which is already ranked on the SERP as http. Will the link juice from the SERP-ranked http version of that page immediately flow to the now-canonical https version? Will the https version of the page immediately replace the http version on the SERP, with the same ranking? Thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JGRLLC0 -
Which is the best option for these pages?
Hi Guys, We have product pages on our site which have duplicate content, the search volume for people searching for these products is very, very small. Also if we add unique content, we could face keyword cannibalisation issues with category/sub-category pages. Now based on proper SEO best practice we should add rel canonical tags from these product pages to the next relevant page. Pros Can rank for product oriented keywords but search volume is very small. Any link equity to these pages passed due to the rel canonical tag would be very small, as these pages barely get any links. Cons Time and effort involved in adding rel canonical tags. Even if we do add rel canonical tags, if Google doesn't deem them relevant then they might ignore causing duplicate content issues. Time and effort involved in making all the content unique - not really worth it - again very minimal searchers. Plus if we do make it unique, then we face keyword cannibalisation issues. -- What do you think would be the optimal solution to this? I'm thinking just implementing a: Across all these product based pages. Keen to hear thoughts? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
What to do with Authoritative footer pages?
Alo everyone! The site I'm working on has had a homepage that essentially used the footer as the main form of navigation on the site and the PA of each of those pages reflects that. I'm helping them re-organize the site (I'm still a noob though), and was curious for some input on this particular situation. Some of the most authoritative pages are: 1. www.charged.fm/privacy - PA 29 2. www.charged.fm/terms - PA 29 My question: Is this just a consequence of previous mistakes that we live with, or is there something involving 301's and creation of new pages that could help us utilize the link juice on these pages. Or should we come up with ways to internally link to 'money' pages from these pages instead? Thanks for any input, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | keL.A.xT.o0 -
What do you do with the page of a product that has been deleted?
As anyone know with an ecommerce website, products are constantly being added and removed. Once products are removed, the corresponding product pages are not reachable. Currently, I am redirecting to the Search page, if a product page is reached, whose corresponding product has been deleted. I am not sure if that is the correct, recommended technique from a SEO perspective. Should I try to show related products on the redirected page? Does anyone here know what is the best thing to do with this product page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amitramani0 -
Why do my https pages index while noindexed?
I have some tag pages on one of my sites that I meta noindexed. This worked for the http version, which they are canonical'd to but now the https:// version is indexing. The https version is both noindexed and has a canonical to the http version, but they still show up! I even have wordpress set up to redirect all https: to http! For some reason these pages are STILL showing in the SERPS though. Any experience or advice would be greatly appreciated. Example page: https://www.michaelpadway.com/tag/insurance-coverage/ Thanks all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
How can you indexed pages or content on pages that are behind a pay wall or subscription login.
I have a client that has a boat of awesome content they provide to their client that's behind a pay wall ( ie: paid subscribers can only access ) Any suggestions mozzers? How do I get those pages index? Without completely giving away the contents in the front end.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BizDetox0