Keywords like "page speed," "Page Speed Insights results," and other tools are a staple of SEO audits and strategies. It's no wonder, as Google places significant importance on user experience, which includes promoting content that loads quickly and doesn't burden slower internet connections.
Attention to detail significantly improves the website's reception, which in turn can translate into increased search engine popularity.
Page speed and bounce rate
Do you remember the last time you sat down at a restaurant table and, after five minutes of idle waiting, started casting pointed glances at the waiters? Or perhaps you had the unpleasant experience of nervously tapping your fingers at the counter while the clerk slowly made his way to his seat, focused entirely on keeping his coffee in his cup?
You surely also remember the frustration each of these situations brought. You're probably familiar with the thought of giving up, but hunger or the need to receive an official stamp forced you to continue waiting.
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Similar feelings arise when an online store customer lands on a slow website that loads, loads, and keeps loading…
However, the customer has more options than you – after a few seconds of patient waiting, they will close the store tab and check what's going on with your competition.
Page load times and the ability to interact with them directly impact the number of bounces or abandonments. Detailed data on this phenomenon is available at thinkwithgoogle.com:
Although the research dates back to 2017 and was conducted using a neural network, which – according to Google – has about 90% forecasting accuracy, it still gives us a full picture of the phenomenon.
Mobile site, but with some breathing problems
Page loading speed is a significant issue, especially when accessed on mobile devices. When designing and optimizing mobile websites, it's worth considering factors beyond our control that will impact user experience, particularly:
- the speed and stability of the connection, which results from the user's Internet plan, but also from its current coverage,
- the possibilities offered by the equipment – both older and newer smartphones are in circulation.
Adapting your website to the capabilities of users' devices is crucial to keeping them on your site. With 50% of your traffic coming from mobile, neglecting speed optimization efforts can result in losing that traffic and, consequently, potential conversions.
It's also worth mentioning Mobile First Indexing – the prioritization of mobile pages by web crawlers, whose full rollover in the search engine algorithm has been postponed until next year (2021). This doesn't mean, however, that mobile sites can now lie fallow and wait for their turn. On the contrary – this is the ideal time to focus on improving mobile versions of websites – eliminating potential errors and selecting the best solutions.
Website Speed in the SEO Process
Google's official announcement regarding page speed is clear: page speed is a ranking factor. This also directly answers the question in the title: yes, page speed is important for SEO.
Page speed, however, is only one part of a larger set of factors known as UX – User Experience. Google is increasingly emphasizing user experience and promoting solutions that aim to make websites easier to use. Poor site structure and outdated and unoptimized technologies are losing ground when faced with the growing needs of internet users.
In the SEO process, speed should be considered not from the perspective of PSI scores, but rather from the perspective of the overall experience the website provides to visitors. The tools I'll mention in the following paragraphs will allow you to collect data that will help you improve your website. Each of them has its own method of evaluating a website, which is not synonymous with how web crawlers evaluate it.
It's worth noting that Google rates websites as either good or bad. Being labeled "BAD" can have negative consequences for your ranking in the SERPs. Martin Splitt mentioned this during a special episode of #AskGoogleWebmasters, recorded in October 2019:
However, this does not mean that the score in any of Google's website performance tools equates to a ranking increase or decrease.
Later in the video, John Mueller mentions “two places” where website speed information is obtained:
- laboratory data,
- data collected from users of the website.
The information gathered from these two places is available in the Page Speed Insights report. We'll take a closer look at it in a moment.
In the meantime, it's worth quoting Google's general advice on page speed:
"JUST MAKE SITES FAST FOR USERS." While this slogan may seem insignificant, it's crucial to any online marketing activity – a user (potential customer) whose needs are met and the offer presented in a clear and concise manner will be happy to use it and decide to return to the site. Meanwhile, many of us – including SEO specialists – lose sight of the end user, focusing on analyzing web robot traffic and optimizing everything for crawlers.
Website Speed Tools
So let's discuss tools designed to support the work of teams working on a website. There are many solutions; below is just a selection of the ones we use most often. Would you like to share your favorites with us? Let us know what you use in the comments!
SPEED INSIGHTS PAGE
Page Speed Insights is the most well-known speed tool… but can we really only talk about page speed? In its current version, PSI allows you to measure website performance. As mentioned above, the results are based on data collected from lab tests (via Lighthouse) and from data collected from real users (via Chrome User Experience Report).
About Chrome User Experience Report
CrUX provides data on:
– First Contentful Paint (FCP) – time from the start of page loading to the moment the first element is rendered,
– First Input Delay (FID) – the time from the start of loading to the moment when you can interact with the page,
– Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – time from the start of loading to the moment of rendering the largest content element,
– Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – the sum of unexpected page layout shifts.
About Lighthouse
This is an automated tool that analyzes the quality of websites. You can access the Lighthouse report via a plugin or using Chrome Developer Tools:
Lighthouse simulates page loading and analyzes the performance of individual website aspects – performance, accessibility, use of best practices, SEO and Progressive Web App.
The screenshot above indicates that the performance score is based on data collected during Lighthouse testing. For detailed information on how your site is evaluated, click the "See calculator" link:
The data collected by Lighthouse and CrUX may differ. Lighthouse simulates page loading under its terms and conditions, while CrUX shares data collected from users loading the page from different locations and using different connection speeds.
The next section of the Page Speed Insights report contains the OPPORTUNITIES and DIAGNOSTICS sections. Each section is accompanied by the note, "These suggestions can help speed up your page load time. They do not directly impact your Performance score." This means that implementing them and improving your page will likely have no significant impact on the results generated by Lighthouse's simulations. However, implementing these improvements will allow you to speed up your page and improve its user experience, which in turn may translate into fewer bounces.
In both, the Page Speed Insights section contains specific tips, often suggesting solutions dedicated to a given CMS:
TEST MY SITE
Test My Site is another website analysis tool, but it focuses on mobile devices. Similar to Page Speed Insights, it uses data collected by Lighthouse and CrUX, but the test results are presented in a more accessible way, mostly understandable to those not familiar with technical terms.
My Site Test generates a multi-page report on the current status and potential improvements to your site, which is sent to your email address in PDF format. The report includes a section for marketers, including notes on personalizing the user experience, links to articles on the topic, and case studies from major brands. The second section is intended for developers and includes a checklist, such as:
The data and recommendations contained in Test My Site reports are essentially the same as those presented by Page Speed Insights, but the form of presentation differs.
GTmetrix
GTmetrix focuses on the technical aspects of a website. The analysis results are presented as percentages – one for results based on Google's guidelines (PageSpeed Score) and the other for those based on Yahoo's guidelines (YSlow Score). While the recommendations often overlap, the results will vary in some cases, allowing for a broader perspective on website speed issues.
GTMetrix also offers Waterfall, a table that allows you to see the loading order of individual elements on a page. Analyzing the table allows you to identify places where loading is delayed (e.g., certain JS files or images) and identify elements that return 404 errors (e.g., links to old CSS files).
Pingdom
Pingdom is another popular tool that helps you pinpoint problem areas on your page. It highlights opportunities to improve your page:
along with a general overview. The following tables also provide detailed information on the size of individual elements and request sources. Similar to GTmetix, you can sort the data as needed.
WebPageTest
WebPageTest allows for very detailed configuration of the test conditions – server location, browser type, and internet connection type. Test results provide extensive information about website speed, with the score provided based on up to six ratings. The analysis is based on three page load cycles. One of the most interesting features of WebPageTest is the page load video, which is perfect for demonstrating page loading issues to a client:
The level of sophistication of the tool is evidenced by the fact that it is one of the few solutions of this type that has its own book titled "Using WebPageTest".
The downside? The tool's appearance is starting to differ from what we're used to with other tools, but this doesn't affect the value of subsequent test results. Another issue is the queue – during peak online hours, you have to wait several minutes for test results.
Website Speed Test
Website Speed Test is an excellent tool for examining website graphics. In many cases, graphics have a key impact on page speed, so a thorough analysis can be extremely useful. Website Speed Test analyzes images and suggests areas for image compression improvement, as well as how the IMG file would appear if a different format were used.
Page Speed and SEO – Google Debunks the Myths
The creation of this text coincided with the publication by Google of another episode of the “SEO Mythbusting” series, which addresses the issue of page speed.
This time, Martin Splitt and Eric Enge examine the problem of overestimating page speed as one of the most important ranking factors. They also address the problem of placing excessive value on a website's performance in Google's analytics tools, especially Lighthouse.
The video also touches on other topics, including what I mentioned in the opening paragraphs – page speed and performance are crucial from the end user's perspective – the slower a page loads, the more irritated they become. This significantly increases the likelihood of abandoning further interaction with the page, or even returning to it later. The gentlemen also emphasize that the results obtained in Google tools are not always accurate, as the test is conducted on our internet connection and device. Users don't always have a high-quality smartphone, and page speeds may be quite different on a less powerful phone.
This doesn't mean, however, that website speed isn't a significant ranking factor. In fact, websites that are better optimized for speed tend to rank higher in the SERPs.
“(…) Page Speed matters to your users. It also matters to your conversions (…)”
However, Mr. Splitt and Mr. Enge emphasize that a fast website will be of no use if its content is not valuable to users, and this means one thing – “Content is still king.”
Optimal website speed
Is site speed a ranking factor? Of course it is. A fast site performs better in search engines and is more likely to be visited by users.
Do the results from Page Speed Insights or other speed tools correspond to how Google rates a website? No – the tools and scoring serve to indicate the degree of optimization performed and to identify potential issues. Points or percentages do not directly translate into rankings.
As with automated website audits or SEO plugins in WordPress, not every analysis will be fully reliable, nor will every guideline be implementable. For example, Page Speed Insights lists all tags related to website analytics, mostly provided by Google, as elements that delay page loading. The same applies to certain technical solutions that cannot be implemented in a given CMS. This problem often affects SaaS solutions as well.
Regardless of the tool you choose to optimize your site's performance and speed, it's important to ensure your content is presented as efficiently (and quickly!) as possible. Improving rendering-inhibiting elements will undoubtedly positively impact your site's user experience, which almost always translates into increased visits and conversions.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Website loading speed, especially on mobile, is a key Google ranking factor that directly prevents customer loss and minimizes bounce rates.
- Page speed is an official Google ranking factor and part of your UX strategy, so optimizing your website for user experience actually translates into better visibility in search results.
- Tools such as PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix and WebPageTest allow for multi-faceted analysis of website performance, providing both technical data (Lighthouse) and information about real user experiences (CrUX).
- Although site speed is a key factor influencing conversion and user satisfaction, Google reminds us that it should not be overestimated at the expense of content – even the fastest website will not replace valuable content, which remains the most important element of ranking.
- Page speed improves user experience and search engine results, but analytics should be considered as a guide, not a direct ranking factor.
