Website Loading Speed - What Your Web Designers Won't Tell You
But, dear readers, let me tell you that loading speed and the user experience is where all the SEO action is in 2016...
Turn Your Website into a Lamborghini
Benefits include:
- Faster loading when viewed on Desktop.
- Faster loading when viewed on laptops and tablets.
- Faster loading on mobile devices (super important in 2016).
- Much better UX (User Experience).
- Significant reduction in bounce rates.
- Increase in page views.
- Increase in time on page.
- Increase in time on site.
- Significant boost in search engine rankings.
- Increase in conversion rates.
Unfortunately for most small business owners, website loading speed is pretty much the last thing their web designers take into consideration when building a website for them. Consequently, though your small business website may look (to the untrained eye) like a Lamborghini on the net when its published. You'll be shocked to know that you're actually cruising around town with a 2 litre Ford Focus engine under the hood...
Why Your Website is Built the Wrong Way
Now wait up, wait up, before you accuse me of defending other people's sub-par web-building practices, let me explain what I mean!
There are three reasons why web designers build sites the wrong way:
- Because they don't know any better.
- Because they don't care.
- Because you screwed them on the budget.
To point 1: it's true that there are a large amount of website designers out there who learned to build websites in what might be termed, 'the old school of web design', and who are simply not cognisant of Google's many, many, many updates on the subject of how to build a website so it loads faster (or how important page load speed and mobile compatibility actually are).
To point 2: it's also true that there are a percentage of web designers out there who know how websites SHOULD be built so far as Google is concerned. But who really just don't care. Because - not to put too fine a point on in - you haven't paid them enough to give a damn. Which segues very nicely...
To point 3: remember when you were haggling with your web designer over price? And how you screwed him down a few thousand and felt good about it; safe in the knowledge that you were getting the exact same product, just for a much cheaper price? Well unfortunately for you, even though it may LOOK (from the front end) like you got the same product, I can assure you that is NOT the same product so far as Google is concerned. And therein lies the problem.
How to Build Websites Correctly
Website Design Examples
Shipping Containers (#1 in Google search for 'Shipping Containers').
- Website, SEO and SEO content (over 50,000 words) by SEO North Sydney.
Private Investigator (#1 in Google search for 'Private Investigator Sydney').
- Website, SEO and content by SEO North Sydney.
North Shore Mechanic (#1 in Google search for 'Mechanic North Shore').
- Website, SEO and content by SEO North Sydney.
iLasik Surgery (#1 and #3 in Google search for 'iLasik Surgery Sydney).
- Website, SEO and content by SEO North Sydney.
Web Design - How to Seperate the Wheat from the Chaff
And therein lies the problem, because this budget focused methodology is great for your web design company (as their coders bill less hours), but AWFUL for Google, due to the way the website is constructed and coded. With SEO North Sydney, we code the website in a way that adheres to Google Best Practice. This is a much more labour intensive process, but ensures that when the website is launched, it not only looks amazing, but it gains instant love from Google, due to the way the Googlebot is able to crawl and index the site.
SEO North Sydney's remit is to build small business owners and SME's websites that will automatically rank in Google, due to the code that underlies the website build itself. Where standard web design companies build web sites 'from the front to the back', SEO North Sydney build websites 'from the back to the front'. After all, our clients are paying us to get them on the first page of Google. So why would we design a website in a way that is going to significantly hinder our ability to deliver all the Google first pages we've guaranteed the small business owner in the contract?
We wouldn't. And we don't. When we take on a website build we do so safe in the knowledge that the finished product will not only look amazing and function brilliantly, but that it also ticks all the coding requirements that Google need to correctly index, catalogue and load the site quickly.
Which brings us rather neatly back to the issue of page load speed.
Higher Bounce Rate - Lower Conversions
In case you're not familiar with the term bounce rate – which happens to be a very important parameter related to the performance of a web site – it is commonly defined as the percentage of visitors who reach a website and then just leave (or 'bounce out'), without interacting with the site in any way.
The findings of a Kissmetrix study (citing gomez.com and akamai.com as sources) reveals that:
- 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
- 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
- A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.
And a Strangeloop study brings the point home even more strongly:
Website Loading Speed – Why it's More Important Than Ever
As any web marketer or SEO professional worth his salt would tell you, web traffic derived from organic search results is the best converting traffic a website can get. But with over 200 major ranking factors, and 10,000 sub-ranking factors deciding who goes where in Google's search engine results, it's become increasingly difficult for small business owners to get their websites on the first page of Google (where all the action is). Website loading speed however, is what we might call 'low hanging fruit' so far as SEO is concerned. And once the website's code is re-written to better mirror Google Best Practice specifications, a significant (and almost instantaneous) bump in your website's rankings in Google search, is common.
Which brings us to the question of:
How to Measure the Loading Speed of a Website
Probably the oldest of these services is the Pingdom Website Speed Test:
Pingdom Website Speed Test
Google PageSpeed Insights Test
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
GMetrix Website Speed Test
Websites: the Need for Speed
Why Your Hosting Can Make or Break Your Website
There are many options to implement this, but the best possible way to upgrade from a shared hosting environment is to go to what is known as a VPS (or Virtual Private Server). While a basic VPS account would typically cost a lot more than a shared account, the difference in speed is often significant, so it makes the extra monthly hosting cost, well worth your while.
If your site is already on a VPS (or on a superior host like a dedicated server), the loading speed can still be improved by tuning various server configuration parameters such as the MySQL configuration (if your site uses a MySQL database in the backend, as most sites do today), Operating System level caching etc. But again, this is delving into some serious tech, so best left to experts like SEO North Sydney.
Conclusion: Speed Up Your Website and Win!
Click here for a whole heap of brilliant Web Design examples. And here for Search Engine Optimisation information to guarantee your website gets on the 1st page of Google.