Boost if loading website under 1 sec
-
Hello,
Can I increase my ranking if my website loads in under 1 second ?
Thank you,
-
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I agree with you there is probably more a penalty if you are slow than a bonus if you are fast or average.
-
I have increased our speed dramatically by getting an upgrade to our server from our hosting company. I noticed a big increase in traffic and ranking for the pages that were slower than 10s in total but you have to be aware that there are lots of different metrics surrounding speed and what you are seeing inside google analytics can sometimes be confusing.
For example, there are metrics for the time it takes for the entire page to load but I have a plugin called 'lazy-load' that loads all the above the fold content immediately and is smart about loading bigger items further down the page. There are lots of tools if you google 'waterfall speed test' or something similar which will show you precisely what's slowing the page up.
But under 5 seconds is fine and we have many number one national and local rankings loading in 5, 6 and sometimes 8 seconds depending on the volume of traffic.
It's more of a 'penalty for being slow' than a 'prize for being fast' although a really quick loading website is impressive from a user perspective.
The next month I migrated our site to HTTPS and saw an immediate bump in rankings across the board, so this is one where google is giving out algorithmic love - if you like.
Also be aware of mobile loading times vs desktop and make sure you divide it up into countries and localities. These types of data dimensions in google analytics will give you a much better picture.
I've found that if someone really likes what they see in the SERP, so a strong headline and meta description, nice data markup (schema) and additions like sitelinks or hyperlinks to their precise search then they will wait longer for a page to load. And the only way to really test this is with hotjar or a recording tool so you can see what users are actually doing on the site.
I would also look at bouncerate or 'adjusted bounce rate' if you google adjusted bounce rate you can set a timer after 10 or 20 seconds and discount people who are reading your article, getting what they want and then bouncing. Because these are not seen by google as bounces but are in analytics. It's east to set up and there's a guy called 'measureschool' where I learned how to do it, it's a step by step thing.
So I would consider focussing your energies elsewhere for a while to try to move the dial in the right direction. Because sub 1 second is crazy fast. Even for AMP.
-
Good to know that 5 seconds is still good. That you very much for the detailed explanation.
-
Well there are few "loadings website" parameters - TTFB (time to first byte), initial rendering or document complete.
It's great if TFFB is under 1s including network connection and DNS resolving.
It's fantastic if initial rendering is closer to 1 sec too.
Would be great if document complete is near 3-4-5 secs.But this won't help you with ranking... well just little bit even insignificant.
But that would help you in CRO because users want to visit faster sites. -
It is good to know. I thought getting from 4 second to 1 second would help but apparently it doesn't much but is more for the user from what I understand.
-
Nope. The use of page speed as a (minor, and very specific) ranking factor doesn't work that way. Never has.
Page speed only applies to a small percentage of search queries and it's used as a disqualifier for really slow pages (think over 15 or 20 seconds). Meaning if your page is really slow compared to your competitors, their page will likely be preferred over yours. But small incremental improvements in page speed won't result in ranking boosts. (And Google's on record as saying that even slower pages will earn SERP results if they're content is significantly better for the user's query.)
Improve page speed for the usability of your site, not because a small incremental speedup will change rankings.
Hope that helps?
Paul
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
-
Please have a look at my website. I am stuck here.
Here might be the reason. I had loads of unnecessary content so I given them the noindex tag. I tried to change the robot.txt file but that shouldn't be a problem in SEO. First my site had a country specific domain and then a year later I changed it to .Com, as to target globally (Mainly US). My site is ranking well in that specific country (never been close to page 1) on page 3 almost every time. It's not ranking in other countries, despite the fact that I've not targeted it to any specific country since the domain was changed. A month ago, I deleted 404 pages and all the thin content which was indexed in the SERP and also deleted the duplicated contents and as well as the copied contents. Meanwhile I've also tried changing the headings in some of the products articles as they were causing the duplicate heading issue. I've recently switched my hosting from the UK based server to the Us based server because the last hosting has bad downtime. So far until now nothing seems to be working in my favor. I'm just tired of resolving issues and in return finding a zero result. This is my devil site: 10stuffs.com plz check it out and tell me why my site is not ranking at all and what sould I do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anshu14320 -
How to handle images (lazy loading, compressing, caching...) to impact page load and thus SEO?
Hi all, I am looking for a conclusive answer on how to handle images on Wordpress websites. Most of the time we encounter the same problems regarding images. There are several options to make sure that images don't increase page load too much: Page caching and compressing: standard Lazy loading: helps decrease page load time, but Google might not crawl the images so not good for SEO. See this article on Googlebot scrolling. Correct image format (for example WebP): tried it several times and doesn't help much to decrease page load time. What is best practice? Are there standards or preferred options for the image dimensions and quality (max height, width, number of pixels, rectangular or square) before you upload it, also regarding responsiveness? Is it better to use .jpg, .png or WebP? To sum up, what should you do by default to handle images on websites so you can still have a good page speed even with loads of images? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
How does google decide who to rank 1 st ?
Let take a medical example. Flu symptoms How does google know who has the best answer ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Angular JS - Page Load
Website build in process in Angular JS. We are looking at prerendering the pages so its all good. However, because there are going to be few server requests, how would the page load be like for search engines? Also, on the client side (browser) would there be any impact if we prerender the pages? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
How to Submit My new Website in All Search Engines
Hello Everyone, Can Any body help to suggest Good software, or Any other to easily Submit my website , to All Search Engines ? ? Any expert Can help please, Thanx in Advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | falguniinnovative0 -
Is my website is having enough content on it to rank?
I have less content on my website, is this okay or I need to add more content on my pages? Website is - brandstenmedia.com.au Any other suggestions for the website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Green.landon0 -
My website is not indexing
Hello Experts As i search site :http://www.louisvuittonhandbagss.com or just entering http://www.louisvuittonhandbagss.com on Google i am not getting my website . I have done following steps 1. I have submitted sitemaps and indexed all the site maps 2.i have used GWT feature fetch as Google . 3. I have submitted my website to top social book marking websites and to some classified sites also . Pleae
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aschauhan5210 -
Merging 3 websites into 1
Hi I was wondering if someone can give me a bit of advice - outside of my full time job I run three websites - all in the same area, but all do three different things 1. Directory (DA19) 2. Blog (DA 23) 3. Products (DA35) I want to merger all three website into one and all be on one website (rather do it now than keep working on three websites). I have included the DAs of each site ( I know they are not amazing, but i've only recently started working on two of them), but I want to place all three websites under the Blog url. Regarding 301's of the pages, would I be better doing at the top level and 301 all the pages to the home page, or spending the time and 301 the old product page for instance to the new product page - this is a much bigger project, but what are the potential gains. Is there anything else I should consider when switching the sites - all three are wordpress sites (I know it has its limitations but they are easy to create). Thanks in Advance Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0