About a year ago, Jesus Mendes, Head of SEO at Mail Online, woke up to a shock: a core update from Google had caused his website - one of the world's most visited online newspapers - to lose half of its traffic. And that overnight. Find out more about PageSpeed Insights and how you can use it to uncover performance sins.
The impact on the Mail Online website was dramatic and confusing. So Jesus felt compelled to publish a post in Google Search Console Help to ask the SEO community for advice:
His unusual and desperate appeal:
The day after the core algorithm update (June 3rd), we saw a massive drop in search traffic from Google (loss of 50% of daily traffic). This drop occurred over the course of 24 hours and we made no changes to the site. (...) This applies to all sections, devices, AMP and non-AMP.
The first answer to his problem was not long in coming. And it found an obvious reason for the sudden loss of traffic. For as harsh as it may sound, the Mail Online website was ranked as follows, according to the Search Console Help Community:
Pure SEO junk. (...) It takes over 12 seconds to load the website.
The site's loading speed was clearly the culprit. Dave Turring explains why the Daily Mail has such a slow website with four points:
- The website is overloaded with advertising
- It has so many revealing pictures of trash news that it is almost a website for adults
- Each of the so-called news articles is simply a picture with completely useless information
- Annoying autoplay videos slow down loading and create a poor user experience
In short: there is too much and too large media content, which slows down the website considerably.
The underestimated factor: speed
So one of the biggest online newspapers can lose half of its data traffic overnight. And this is because of slow loading times, also known as page speed. So what chance does your website have if you've never thought about page speed? This article shows you how to get to grips with the problem.
He also lists important resources for improving your page speed and SEO ranking. Let's first take a look at why loading speed is so important for your website.
Page speed and sales
Page speed plays an important role in sales. In the past, users were patient enough to wait a long time for an image to load. Whereas now, 53 percent of mobile website visitors will go elsewhere if a website takes longer than three seconds to load.
Nowadays, people are simply no longer prepared to put up with long waiting times. Because there are many other places they can visit on the Internet to get what they are looking for. A slow loading speed is bad for everyone. Even the big brands find it hard to get customers to their website if the pages take a long time to load.
Digital marketing guru Neil Patel illustrates the critical importance of page speed by referring to a study conducted by Amazon. This found that every additional second it takes for the website to load costs the company 1 percent of its revenue. See this video on YouTube:
This is especially true if your website is intended for e-commerce: users need to be able to access your website and everything they want to buy with just a few clicks. Even Amazon rarely has videos on product pages. And the company has dedicated teams working on their website 24 hours a day.
The importance of page speed for Google rankings
The performance of your website is an important ranking factor. In plain language, this means that a shorter loading time means your website will appear higher up in the Google search results (SERPs). This means that more visitors will come to your website. They will also stay there longer, which in turn improves the bounce rate.
The top places on Google are therefore always occupied by websites that also load quickly. Google has been the number 1 search engine for a long time, which means that the Google algorithm's requirements for websites usually become standard. The slower the speed of your website, the lower the chance that it will achieve top rankings or any ranking at all. And we all know that most people only click on the top ten results for a search query or keyword.
An approach to page speed
In recent years, Google has become much stricter in terms of the technical requirements it places on websites. At least if they want to achieve good rankings. This means that websites that are smartphone-friendly receive better rankings.
In contrast, slow websites and those that still rely on HTTP instead of HTTPS no longer stand a chance in 2021. It's important to remember that load time measurements also take into account the way the website works on smartphones. If your website doesn't have a high PageSpeed for mobile devices, this will also have a negative impact on search engine rankings. In addition, Google's increased focus on page experience and the new Core Web Vitals also take speed into account.
Improving page speed helps Googlebots
When we talk about page speed, we're not just referring to the time it takes visitors to access a website. We are also thinking about the speed for search engine crawlers. If the speed of your website is too slow, it will also be more difficult for the Googlebot to access your content.
This is another reason why you should work on the performance of your website. If you are concerned about Google being able to access your website, you should also submit a sitemap.
Website speed is becoming even more important
Google's aim is to offer website visitors the best possible user experience. This means that a slower page speed on a website will likely lead to even fewer clicks and even lower rankings in the future.
Google is currently planning to introduce a corresponding labeling system for its Chrome browser. This makes it very likely that in the future, websites that are slow to load will be flagged in search results. The moment this happens, websites with slow loading speeds will immediately be at a disadvantage in Chrome.
Check website performance with PageSpeed Insights
To help operators adapt to the growing importance of speed and get an idea of how their websites are performing, Google has created PageSpeed Insights. This tool gives you a good idea of whether the most important performance adjustments have already been used and also offers you some useful tips for improving your website.
How does Google rate PageSpeed?
A website rating is calculated by running Lighthouse to collect and analyze site data. Here, points are awarded according to a rating system that summarizes the performance of a website. You can see these at the top of PageSpeed Insights:
- 90 or more points are considered good
- Between 50 and 90 points are in need of improvement
- Under 50 is bad
When you enter a URL into PageSpeed Insights, the tool tries to measure data for different states of loading times. Here are some of the most important key figures that are analyzed and displayed:
- FCP (First Contentful Paint): Stands for the time it takes websites to load an initial text or image. The FCP therefore describes how long it takes for a user to be able to interact.
- FID (First Input Delay): This value shows how long the website takes to respond after an interaction. For example, after a click on a button.
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): This value always refers to the main element of a website. For example, how long it takes for the largest image to load.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): The CLS value indicates how the visual stability behaves when loading a page. The smaller this value is, the better the user experience.
The measured values of the different areas are identified by a PageSpeed Insights symbol:
- Green tick: Means a fast website
- Orange circle: Stands for an average page
- Red warning triangle: Marks a slow side
If you want to find out what requirements you need for Google PageSpeed Insights, you can read about it here at Google.
7 tips to improve your loading time immediately
Here are some areas you can work on to improve the loading speed of your website (and the Google PageSpeed Score). And to ensure a better user experience and better rankings.
Activate compression
Compress the size of your CSS, HTML and JavaScript files so that they are under 150 bytes. Or use server-side caching for WordPress.
Minify CSS, JavaScript and HTML
Remove spaces, commas and other unnecessary characters from your code. Also delete all commands with non-uniform formatting and unused code. See this guide for WordPress.
Reduce redirects and broken links
Check your website regularly for broken links and repair them or remove them completely. You can find out which tools and methods you can use to find broken links in this article.
Reduce the number of redirects on your website as much as possible and it is best to use server-side redirects, as these are generally much faster.
WordPress hosting - response time of your server
Make sure that your website is hosted on a suitable server. The optimal server response time is less than 200 ms. Consider switching to a different server or hoster if your current solution is not working.
Optimize images
Make sure that the images on your website are not larger than they need to be. With the right type of compression, you can significantly reduce file sizes without noticeably changing the quality of the images. You can find out which WordPress plugins can help you optimize your images in this article.
Optimize your website for all devices
Remember that it's not just the desktop version of your website that needs to be fast. At least half of internet users use a smartphone, which is why Google now uses the speed of the mobile version of a website as the basis for its ranking. So you can't avoid improving the loading time of the mobile version of your website if you want to achieve a good ranking.
Experiment with plugins
If the architecture of your website is a little outdated, you could also experiment with caching plugins. Or better still, use server-side caching. Installing the Amp plugin on your website is a good way to improve speed for mobile visitors.
Now it's up to you!
We hope that these tips will give you a better understanding of performance optimization and Google PageSpeed Insights so that you can optimize your website and bring it to the top.
Help with optimization
What questions do you have about website speed and PageSpeed Insights? Feel free to use the comment function. Do you want to be informed about new articles on WordPress & performance? Then follow us on Twitter, Facebook or via our newsletter.
