Does Page Speed Affect SEO?
Pagespeed does influence SEO rankings, but not as much as you are led to believe by many SEO professionals and other authoritative sources on SEO.
Page loading speed and page weight are important ranking factors for people searching on mobile phones and other handheld devices.
This is because time and data are a precious resource for the majority of these users. The last thing a mobile user wants is a slow-loading website on a 3G or 4G connection that also burns through 10mb of their mobile data.
Is page speed a ranking factor?
It’s true though, page speed is a (slight) ranking factor
Google has repeatedly said that a fast-loading site will help you rank better. According to Yoast, Google has been measuring the speed of your site and using that in their ranking algorithms since 2010.
In 2018, Google launched the so-called ‘Speed Update,’ making page speed a ranking factor for mobile searches. Google stated it would only affect the slowest sites and that fast sites getting faster won’t get a ranking boost.
In 2021, Google announced the page experience algorithm update. The focus of this update was to show that page speed and user experience are intertwined.
The introduction of Core Web Vitals established that speed is an essential ranking factor. The update also gave site owners a set of metrics, standards and tools to benchmark/measure their websites.
Does page speed affect Google ranking?
Page loading speed does affect Google rankings, but not in a big way like many people think. Pagespeed is not as important as other signals like page content
It makes sense if you stop and think about it in the real world.
Why would Google care that your website is fast-loading and has perfect core web vitals scores if the content is terrible?
Google still wants to serve searchers the most relevant information even if the page experience (and page loading speed) is not so great.
People search to find answers, and if your website can provide the best answer AND if it loads quickly, that’s a bonus for the user.
If you want to create web pages that rank, the best piece of SEO advice I can give you is to create high-quality content that is optimised for your target keywords.
Creating great content and doing good on-page optimisation is still (and probably always will be) the best way to rank in the SERPs.
How much does site speed affect SEO?
Not that much – Page speed is more like a ranking tie-breaker from what I’ve observed in my experience.
Google has stated that page experience signals have become more important when there are many pages with relevant content competing for visibility in the search results.
So in that way, you can think of your site loading speed as more of a tie-breaker or a coin toss in regards to ranking in the search results.