Is improving mobile website speed really that important? Should you be looking at improving the speed of your mobile website?
If your website is taking too long to load on mobile, it WILL affect your Google ranking. Since its algorithm update in July 2018, Google has been penalizing slow-loading mobile websites. With a clear understanding of Google’s core philosophy in mind, this update should come at no surprise.
In this post, we will explain what this update means to you and provide tips on ramping up your speed.
Google’s main priority is to provide its end-users with incredible user experience. If Google’s search results are full of websites with poor navigation design, users will abandon the Google platform and start using other search engines.
In order to create a great user experience, and prevent users from leaving, Google prioritizes websites with outstanding user experience.
The growing number of mobile users is equivalent to growing access to mobile websites. So it makes perfect sense why mobile speed has become the primary metric affecting SEO.
To keep up with Google’s standards, you always have to view your website architecture through the lens of the users.
If you design your website functionality and curate web content with user experience in mind, you will never have to worry about any future Google updates.
Before you start strategizing a solution, you need reference data. The load speed threshold for mobile sites is about 4 seconds max. You should optimize your mobile speed to be less than that.
You can test your mobile phone speed online by clicking here. The following is an sample screenshot of what you will get/
If your mobile speed is slow, the good news is that there are measures you can take to increase it, they are outlined below.
The content above the fold is all content that is visible to a user before they start scrolling. You should prioritize the loading of content that is visible to the user first before the lower segments of the page load.
Your mobile web pages should be coded in such a way that the server sends through all data pertaining to content above the fold first.
The pursuit of an amazing user experience may tempt you to design a mobile website that’s filled with animated graphics and videos. This may have a negative effect by causing your mobile site to take longer to load all of its bells and whistles.
Having a clean, simple, responsive design will prevent slow loading speeds on mobile. Read more on the importance of having a responsive web design here.
Redirects slow your mobile site speed significantly.
Users need to wait for the request-response cycle to complete before loading a page. This is very inconvenient especially if many links are redirected on the single web page.
To test the number of redirects your mobile site has, you can use an online tool such as Varvy’s redirect mapper.
A simple matter of improving your website loading speed can lift your Google rank. Follow these tips to ensure that your mobile website is optimized to load at maximum speed.
Is your website still not loading fast enough on mobile? Book a FREE CONSULTATION with the Toronto SEO experts at TheBestMedia.com
