WHAT IS GOOGLE PAGE SPEED AND HOW DO I CHECK IT?
Google’s algorithms are constantly judging your site’s quality and performance. The first ranking factor that an algorithm takes into account is your site’s speed. If users can’t quickly access and read your content, then they may simply leave – and never return. Therefore, If your site is unresponsive and slow to load, then it will affect your search engine ranking.
Google is encouraging websites to improve their page speed to have an optimal experience for users. Google has created a tool that can help you understand your page speed and identify areas for improvement called Google Page Speed. This tool will show you how fast your site is and where you can make improvements.
THE 3 MAIN FACTORS THAT DETERMINE GOOGLE PAGE SPEED
To understand Pagespeed optimisation, we have to consider three crucial factors that determine your pagespeed, these include:
- Critical Rendering Path is the route that your browser takes from your server to the browser window. Slow rendering can consequently affect the speed of the whole page, this is why you have to make sure you have enough resources available to render all the images,scripts other valuable resources.
- Resource Request Ratio is the amount of time it takes for your browser to load the page itself. WordPress speed, for example, can suffer greatly from hight resource requests. Browsers that take to long to load will have a increase in bounce rate as users become more impatient waiting.
- Request Completion Percentage is the total requests that your server has finished processing. This determines the request length and request complexity.
SEO TIPS For GOOGLE PAGE SPEED Optimisation
Now that we have a good understanding of what affects pagespeed, heres how some SEO tips can improve your site’s Google pagespeed.
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- Firstly to to decrease pagespeed to allow images and other resources to be loaded as soon as possible, we need to avoid Lazy Rendering. Lazy Rendering negatively impact your pagespeed as the amount of time it takes to render increase.Â
- Using large images naturally means it takes longer to load thus negatively affecting pagespeed. We suggest using small images that are quick to load on your website to create a smooth user journey and increase pagespeed.Â
- Use HTTPS: Search engines like Google can help improve your page speed if you enable HTTPS on your website. In fact, Google has found that websites that are not using HTTPS are 28% slower.
- Minify Your Code: One of the best ways to improve your page speed is to minify your code. When you do this, you can reduce the amount of resources that are being loaded into your page.
- Reduce the ‘request length’ and ‘request complexity’: The length of your requests and complexity of each request will affect your page speed. That’s why you should try to make your page as short as possible and avoid using too many resources.
conclusion
Since the Pagespeed update in 2021 we are increasingly seeing its importance over the months as Google continues to optimise and update pagespeed. We have seen its powerful impact on search ranking, pagespeed insights, organic traffic and user experience. These are just a few SEO and Google Page Speed Optimisation tips to help improve your site’s speed and ranking.
SEO practices not only help improve search ranking but it vastly helps alongside Pagespeed to work hand in hand creating a perfect combination of SEO optimisation and Pagespeed to increase organic traffic and ultimately sales.
