How Site Speed Affects Your Search Engine Optimisation

How many times have you lost patience with a website because it was too slow to load the page?

It’s almost like internet users have developed attention deficit disorder because of the amount of choice available to us from different websites.  And if a site is just taking even a fraction too long we leave and go and find another site that will deliver the information more efficiently.

Here’s the thing, if your site is on cheap hosting it could actually be costing you more than a few quid every month.

In a recent study by Forrester Research they found that 7 per cent of web visitors expect a web page to load in just 2 seconds or less (0.5 secs faster than in 2006).  So it seems we are growing more and more impatient.

In fact Google’s Vice President Marissa Mayer said in her last Web 2.0 Conference, “Speed matters.  People do not like to wait. Do not make them“.

To achieve a better customer experience, Google’s research reveals that just a 0.5 second delay in page load speed can cause a 20 per cent decrease in traffic and it has used this in not only AdWords analysis but also in its complex search algorithm.

Speed wins for Pay Per Click (PPC) and Organic Search, Google Webmaster’s Official Blog states: “Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed – that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”

If you’re running pay per click advertising on Google AdWords, if your site loads the landing page too slowly it will reduce your quality score.  A low quality score will drive up the cost of your clicks.

The quickest and easiest way to resolve any speed issues is with your hosting, upgrading to a better quality service will mean that your going to improve your Search Engine Optimisation.

You will also reduce your bounce rate and increase your sales conversion because you are improving the user experience, making it more likely someone will make a purchase from you.