Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Yes definitely speed is one of the top reasons why the site ranking does not improve and beat competitors on the first page of search results. Better site speed also improve the bounce rate and conversion. It gives better user experience to your site visitors. if you need any assistance with technical SEO consulting, reach out to Continuum.

There is no doubt that page speed is important for SEO ranking. Studies have shown that the faster a page loads, the higher it ranks in search engine results pages. This is because Google and other search engines take into account factors such as load time when determining where to rank a website. But I've also seen slow websites that rank better than faster websites, and that's because Google takes into account many factors when ranking websites, not just the page speed.

One may put it this way: it is important to have a fast-loading pages, as that helps with better UX and lower bounce rates. But if you're low on the other ranking factors, slower but better-structured websites(with more backlinks) can easily outrank you.

My customer has seen almost %30 percent increase in ad revenues after I fixed his site for various speed problems - now scoring over 80% with mobile and web.

I believe it's important - it should be. Why not? Google will lower energy bills with faster sites, at least

It's always, but after 2018 - page load speed is important for SEO because it is one of the key determining factors for Google's algorithm.

Slow sites turn visitors away. Bounce rate can increase as well and fast sites provide good user experiences for your visitors, and Google will rank those sites higher than slow-loading ones.

Make sure your website open within 1 to 5 secs. More than 5 secs can hurt site performance. I would like to suggest you to use Google web development tool to check and analysis your website. Let me know if you have question

Yes, the theory says that page speed is very important for the ranking of any website, but in practice, I see many top ranking sites with a page speed... even below 50! Sometimes it's a bit complicated to understand Google

Yes, it is. Think about it. Would you like going on a website that takes over an hour to load? Page speed inherently improves user experience and also traffic. For example, check out Your SEO Shop’ s website if you are looking for SEO online shops. Any page of theirs takes only a second to load.

Optimizing your page load time benefits users from a fast loading page which results in a good user experience. If you do not optimize for page load time and your website loads slowly then users are likely to get frustrated and click away from your site.

User experience is measured by Google under Core Web Vitals and you can see its details in:

a) Google Search Console > Page experience
b) Google Lighthouse Audit
c) Google Page Speed Insights

There were core algorithm updates in Q2-Q3 2021 related to page experience where websites with poor page experience scores had a drop in overall visibility in SERPs.

Therefore, you should optimize page load time as it benefits your overall user experience and impacts all traffic channels is not just important for SEO.

It's a bit hard to determine a certain weight that Google applies for websites that have good page speed.

However, I've noticed the biggest improvement gained from fast-loading websites isn't just more organic search traffic, but a higher site-wide conversion rate.

I was able to get my own SEO consulting website up to green core-web vitals and noticed a big lift in conversion rate as a result.

Out of my experience about SEO, I feel page speed does not affect much when you are trying to rank of Search Engine. In overall you may have impacted by visitor leaving the page early, if page does not get loaded properly. Here reduction in visitors may affect your SE positions.

Speed is so important that Google has made it an actual ranking factor. Over time, Google has taken action to improve the loading speed of websites by providing a set of tools for developers and webmasters. The simple answer is that page speed does affect SEO. Page speed is a direct ranking factor, a fact known even better since Google’s Algorithm Speed Update. However, speed can also affect rankings indirectly, by increasing the bounce rate and reducing dwell time.

I have been doing SEO for quite a while and know that speed optimization is now a part of Core Web Vitals. You can login to search console to check it out and your site must pass CWV. In other words, speed of the site is definitely important and is a ranking factor for sure. How much weightage it has is something nobody can actually tell.

@pau4ner Makes a lot of sense...

Hello,
yeah, absolutely!
We work exclusively on page speed optimization, focused on e-commerce, and our clients increased the CRO because of the WPO.

So it is not just important for SEO but also for increasing the conversion rate.

Kind Regards,
Grafeco Network.

We saw a huge improvement our key landing page once we reduced the page loading speed: https://www.aandslandscape.co.uk/school-canopies/

@jasparcj be aware though that if you are running on shared hosting, and using Wordpress, you are going to find it difficult to get a blisteringly fast page speed. I've looks across various hosts and different websites, google always complains about 'reduce server response time' which seem to be anything from 06s - 1.2s.

Yes, Site speed is a Google ranking factor. Google indicated that page speed is one of the signals that are used by algorithms to rank pages. Page speed is also an important factor that affects user experience. research shows that pages with longer loading speed will have a higher bounce rate.

Here are some ways to reduce your page speed

• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
• Reduce redirects
• Remove render-blocking JavaScript
• Use Caching
• Optimize Images
• Enable Gzip compression

Page speed is most important for your user's experience. You will likely see a high bounce rate if you have a slow site.

@jasparcj
many codes of some pages, can be seen as malicious by the Google robot.
Although they are not bad for users, google detects them in another way.
It is best to consult and review those codes.

@pau4ner Thanks for your comment. And you're 100% right

Nobody except Google can tell for sure, but many SEOs and myself (I work with several websites) haven't noticed any substantial change in rankings after improving our site's speed. In fact, you can find many examples of slower sites ranking above much faster websites.

I believe though that if your site speed is so slow that it impairs user's experience, you will lose rankings. Not due to the speed itself, but due to the higher bounce rates it is causing.

In summary (and according to my experience and many other SEO professionals), if your website loads quite fast, improving its speed won't cause any ranking improvements. But if it is very slow, it may have a positive impact.