
PageSpeed and how it Impacts your site.
How page speed impacts your SEO and how to improve it.
For some time now, Page Speed has become a signal used by Google as part of its ranking algorithm. As a matter of fact way back in 2010 Google announced that Page Speed would have an impact on your sites web ranking. You may be asking yourself “Why does Page Speed impact my SEO?” Well Page Speed refers to the amount of time it takes for a page on your site to be completely loaded, or the time a visitor has to wait before your page is completely loaded.
The load time of your site/pages has an impact on both the user experience (UX) of your sites visitors, as well as with search engines. Having a bad UX can cause a loss of revenue if your target audience have to wait too long for your pages to load. They will just end up leaving your site, which will then in turn increase your sites bounce rate. If your site takes ages for it to render and load, well then you will almost certainly receive a penalty from your friends over at Google, as they will penalize your site for being too slow, which will have an impact on your search rankings.
“A search result for a resource having a short load time relative to resources having longer load times can be promoted in a presentation order, and search results for the resources having longer load times can be demoted” *From Google patent.
What can lower your page speed?
There are quite a few things that can play a role in lowering your sites Page Speed. Here’s a list of a few things that can play a role in lowering your sites page speed: Images, external embedded media, code, server issues, flash (yes people still build entire sites with flash) etc… You can boost your sites speed by using a CDN (content delivery network), compressing images and even switching to a faster host.
Pagespeed is only going to become more and more of an important factor (think AMP or accelerated mobile pages). While load time isn’t the most important factor when it comes to ranking your site (just yet anyway), it is still a factor and Google have even stated that page speed is used as a ranking signal. It’s also important to remember that a slow site can play a role in the the rise and or fall of your sites conversion rate.
Keep in mind that for every second that you are able to shave off of your sites load time can make a huge difference. Load time is a major contributor to page abandonment. Page abandonment increases with every second longer that it takes for your site to load.
Now that might not seem like a lot, after all it is only 1 second. According to a study by Google and Bing, every 500 milliseconds delay on your website translates to a 1% loss in revenue.
No better time than now to revisit your sites speed and make adjustments. Below are a few tools to help you along the way and to help get you started.
Tools that you can use to lower your page speed
Google Page Insights: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Googles free page insights tool is the more popular tool that is featured on this list. It provides great insights into your sites load times. From bad CSS, images not properly optimized to browser caching issues, plugins and more. The Page Speed Insights analyzes the most important factors that can play a role in your sites load time for both desktop and mobile website.

Webpage Test Tool: https://www.webpagetest.org
This tool allows for you to select the location that you would like to use to test how your page/site loads. With the data that it provides, you will be able to optimize your page speed for different devices or locations

Yslow: http://yslow.org
Yslow is a browser plugin that analyzes web pages and suggests ways that you can improve them based on a set of rules. With Yslow you get
• Grade based on the performance of the page (you can define your own ruleset)
• Summary of the page components
• Chart with statistics

Pingdom Website Speed Test: https://tools.pingdom.com
Pingdom is another great tool that provides you with feedback on your sites page speed. Its graphs and charts will quickly provide you with a snapshot of your sites performance and which files are lowering/slowing down you sites performance.
It also has a section called “performance insights” with relevant information that shows what you can do to help reduce your sites page speed.

Gtmetrix: https://gtmetrix.com
Gtmetrix is another great free tool that will provide you with insights into your sites performance. You will be able to get a quick overall snapshot of your sites page load time, your pagespeed score, recommendations and more.

The many benefits to increasing your site Page speed (better UX, pleasing Google, and increasing rankings) far outweigh any negative effects there might be (time, resources, etc…) Lowering your site Page speed is something that should not be over looked, as Google wants to showcase sites that are the best for its users and a slow loading site is not a good user experience and therefor in the eyes of Google should not be ranking above the other sites that load much faster.
In Summary
Remember to take your sites load time into consideration when planning out a new site/page. So be sure that you take a look at and plan a strategy around some of the many ways to increase your page speed: Optimize images, enable compression, minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, reduce redirects, leverage browser caching, improve server response time and use a content distribution network (CDN)
Every little bit of time that you can shave off will pay off in the long run, even the smallest of improvements can make a big impact on your visitors experience.
How fast is your website?
