Do Search Engines Value Fast Websites?

A couple of years back, the world’s most popular search engine did an interesting experiment. Through a survey, Google concluded that some Internet users want more than ten search results per page. So, the company upped that up 30 listings per page. Then, something happened. Internet traffic dropped to 20% on those pages. After testing what went wrong, the tech giant concluded that users intuitively left those pages because they were slower to load. How much slower? Just half a second.The same thing applies to your website. Intuitively, a visitor will leave your website if it takes too long to open or if it fails to open properly. What this means is that your site’s bounce rate will increase. Along with this, search engines will know that there’s something wrong with your website, which can have negative consequences. After all, you want your site to rank highly, which is why your page load time is essential information for any SEO campaign.If you’re unsure what prevents your website for opening instantaneously, here are a few tips:
  • Your web hosting: Picking the cheapest hosting is not a long-term solution. Even if you’re running a fully optimised website, your hosting might be harming your page load times. Make sure your hosting plan supports your current traffic and the Web technologies you’re using.
  • Uncompressed images: Quite often, unnecessarily large images are the main problem for slow websites. Make sure to reduce image resolution and increase compression as far as reasonable.
  • Too many widgets or too many third-party plugins can often clog your website. Make sure you only run what you need.

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