Two seconds or under. This is the number set in 2018 by Google as to how quickly your site should load. This stands true today; however, the faster, the better.
This means that a two-second delay in how quickly your website loads may significantly impact how often your site appears in search results. Keep reading to learn the essential factors in keeping your load speed high so that you don’t lose your ranking.
Page Speed Defined
Page speed is how long it takes to download and display one webpage. It includes all page elements, such as CSS, HTML, images, scripts, and all other third-party resources.
Visitor Behavior and Page Speed
Your website is considered the “front door” to your business online. It needs to be easy for someone browsing the site to access and interact with the business online.
According to information from Google, the difference between one and three seconds of load time result in an increased bounce rate of 32%. If you have a page that takes five seconds to load, the bounce rate increases to 90% or more.
Put simply, the longer your page takes to load, the more likely it is that a visitor won’t stick around. While it is only a few additional seconds, modern visitors want fast load times. This means slow sites are penalized when users abandon your site for a faster one.
You should not think that page speed is a secondary issue. It does have an impact on your bottom line. Along with slow load times causing you to lose visitors, it will also hurt your conversions, leaving visitors with a bad impression of your brand.
Some tips to improve your page speed include:
Use a Fast Host
Page speed optimization starts with the right infrastructure. Make sure your web stack is designed for speed.
Use a CDN
If you want to speed up your page loading time, take steps to shorten the distance that information must move between the server and end-user. One way to do this is with a CDN – Content Delivery Network. This geographically distributed group of servers makes it possible to increase speed on your site.
Reduce HTTP Requests
Another method to help reduce page load time is to reduce the number of HTTP requests a page is making. If someone visits a web page, the browser will ping the webserver and request the files that make up the page’s content. When the server provides the files, the browser shows the page content. The browser makes a unique HTTP request for each file that makes up the content on the page. The more files, the more requests, and the longer the page takes to load.
Reducing Your Site Speed
When it comes to reducing your site load speed, there are a lot of factors to consider. Being informed is the best way to ensure that the desired results are achieved and that your site loads as quickly as possible. Keep this in mind to ensure that visitors do not bounce away from your site due to slow loading times.