How Fast Does Your Website Load?

Have you ever really checked this? You need to.

In 2018, Google confused webmasters by announcing that they were going to change their algorithm with the Speed Update.

Within their latest update, Google stated that it would now be taking site speed into consideration when ranking websites, and the pages within those sites.

So you might have asked, didn’t Google already place an emphasis on speed when ranking websites?

They did.

However, there is one caveat within the new update that was not considered before.

Although the speed of a website has been part of Google’s algorithm since 2009, it primarily focused on desktop searches.

Not anymore. Mobile search is the latest focus.

So what changed?

With so many Internet users searching with mobile devices today, now Google is looking at the speed of websites searched on mobile and deciding how to rank sites and content accordingly.

Websites that do not load quickly during a mobile search will be penalized by having their page ranking lowered.

To confuse things even further though, not every site found through a mobile search will be penalized for not loading quickly.

According to Google, if the content within a site is highly informative and relevant, even a slow loading speed will not affect that website’s page ranking.

So, how do you know if your website has content considered valuable enough that site speed would not be a factor?

In order to make that decision, Google will compare the content of one site with similar websites.

Websites that deliver the same information as those competitive sites, but have a slower loading time will have a lower ranking in the search engine results page (SERPs).

The Speed Update that Google released in July of 2018 is certainly going to change the way webmasters create and manage their websites.

That’s why SEO tactics have to constantly evolve to keep page with the mighty G if you want your website and business to remain competitive at the top of search results.

Luckily, there are many tools available that allow webmasters to see how quickly their sites load, and even compare their website speed with competitive sites. There are also many ways to increase the speed at which a website loads.

I recommend you use these top 3 speed tools which are the most popular:

With just a few tweaks, webmasters will find it easy to stay within Google’s new algorithms so their website can remain high in the SERPs, both on desktop and on mobile devices.

Our Velocity℠ service will optimize your website for speed improvement to make sure it loads faster and keep you in compliance with Google’s speed update and help boost your rank in search results.