What Is Meant By ‘Page Speed’ And How Important Is It For An Online Business?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, involves many moving parts all working together. The key to gaining a higher position in the search engine results is to succeed in as many areas as you can, and one of these is known as your ‘page speed’.

Unsure what we mean by that? That’s OK, you’re not alone! Here we will take a good look at what page speed means, and why you should be paying attention to it…

1. What do we mean by ‘page speed’?

Your page speed is, in essence, how long it takes for your page to load when someone clicks on your link, or a browser requests it. Some algorithms will count this as the ‘time to first byte’, or how long it takes for the browser to receive the first byte of information.

More often, it refers to the time it takes for your page to load in its entirety, or almost entirely barring files like videos that may take a little longer.

2. Why is page speed important for your business?

Your page speed can play a role in your rankings on search engines like Google, which lists page speed among the many criteria considered by its algorithm. While Google counts page speed among its ranking factors, how much it counts is constantly changing, and isn’t as important as overall customer experience.

Your overall customer satisfaction will be impacted by how quickly or slowly your page loads. Studies have shown time and again that a lot of people will not wait for content if it is too slow. The question remains, how slow is too slow?

Your digital marketing company should be able to help you get your page speed up to the appropriate levels and improve your SEO in Dubai.

Google and other search engines also offer a service that measures your speed so you can easily check that you meet the minimum required level, and then you can make the necessary improvements from there.

3. How can you improve your page speed?

There are many components and factors that can be acting to slow down your page speed, including:

• Images (compress them)
• Hosting (invest in quality hosting)
• Plug-ins (consider losing a few non-essentials)
• Content (cut the fat)
• File requests
• Excessive redirects

If you are looking to improve your page speed, consider each of these in turn and work to eradicate the issues holding you back.

Compressing your images is one great way to speed up your loading time, as is combining your files to minimise requests. You should also consider your page speed on mobiles as well as desktops as this can be a huge factor today.

How you host your site can be one of the biggest ways to improve your page speed, by changing to a better company. Many cheaper hosting sites involve shared servers that can crash or slow dramatically at busy times.

Opting for a dedicated server or something more reliable can seriously improve the loading time for your page – and thus the likelihood of your website visitors sticking around long enough to make a purchase.

Final thoughts

Page speed, or the time it takes for your page to load, is an essential factor in the success of any online business. A slow page speed can impact your SEO, but more importantly your customer experience will be negatively affected if you aren’t fast enough.

Take the time to check your page speed and see how the right marketing company can help you to improve your speed, and your overall customer experience, today – and be quick about it!