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
-
What is internal like structure best for website
I want to construct website internal like structure better, can you advise me what's model architecture to build menu, navigation, build link, hub content will good for audience and search engine. Thank your advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dunghv360 -
How to find the redirects on website
I want to find the complete internal redirects on website. Just internally linked. How to find such?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Website Structured data in Google
Can anyone help me to show website structure data in Google when someone search my website in Google. I already added my website in Google and Google webmaster tool. Thanks in adv.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | talkinnetventure0 -
Canonicalized Website
We are new to SEO MOZ, and as we are doing our evaluation, multiple page problems have arisen. Our domain is www.moxicopy.com and www.moxicopy.com/blog. Our blog is wordpress hosted but integrated into our site. As we ran our analytics from MOZ PRO, we got TONS of Duplicate Page Title and Duplicate Page Content warnings, over 90 each. Most seem to come from our blog and our different products (we are an ecommerce website). Would the canonicalization of the pages be the cause? And couuld someone further explain exactly what canonical/canonicalization is>? I am very confused, and have a feeling that this is what has hurt our site so much in the last 2-3 weeks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Moxicopy.com0 -
API to power all websites
I spoke to one of my lead web developers and we are planning on powering all of our desktop, mobile and tablet sites with our new API. Everything will be populated through javascript and is cloud-based rather than through actual HTML. How do we incorporate all of our SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | recbrands0 -
Blogs and E-Commerce websites
I have recently launched an e-commerce website which has a whopping domain authority of 1! I was thinking about adding a blog to it (it's in open cart), but that would mean creating it in a wordpress but using the same domain name. Would this be beneficial from an SEO stand point (i.e sending traffic to w blog that isn't actually on the e-commerce website itself) , or am I better off creating content as blogs/articles on other people sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Need advice for indexing a multilingual website
We are in the process of creating a Spanish subdomain of our website. I want to know what needs to be done in regard to meta tags, sitemap.xml and robots.txt so that Google and Bing will index both website properly and not causing the web page on the English site to lost rank. Our English site is www.mydomain.com with the Spanish site being es.mydomain.com We are planning to put a button or link on both sites so that visitors can switch between both sites. The two sites are similar but not all pages are mirror images.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qualbe-Marketing-Group0 -
$1,500 question
I have $1,500 to spend to promote 8 years old website. Almost no SEO work was done for the site in the past 3-4 years. The site has a couple hundreds (around 300) external backlinks pointing to the homepage, and around 30 backlinks pointing to internal pages. It gets around 60% traffic from referring sites, 30% direct, and 10% from SE. The homepage has PR 4. It ranks around 70th place in Google rankings for one of the main keywords. No keyword research has been done for the site. Looking for long term benefits. What would be the best way, in your opinion, to spend this money?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _Z_0