Google is constantly introducing changes affecting the position of both websites and online stores in search results.

Optimizing of the website is a never-ending story. Only taking a constant care of its performance contributes to being one step ahead of the competition. Thanks to numerous tools, we are able to analyze the level of performance of our website and the effectiveness of actions, which aim is to improve the speed of loading of the website. Some of the SEO specialists say that the speed of loading of the website leads to better positioning in Google's results. On the other hand, it is also said that this factor is not directly related to the position of the site in the SERP.

Page speed vs. ranking on Google

To begin with, you should distinguish the speed of the page loading and its weight from the scores awarded by the Google Page Speed. It happens sometimes, that this tool gives abstract results or recommends changes, which implementation is not effective. For example, there is no correlation between position of the search engine results <-> Google Page Insights points, which is confirmed by the provided test. I checked the number of points obtained by the sites displayed in TOP10 for several selected phrases:

The items with the highest scores are marked blue, and those with the lowest number of points turquoise – there is a lack of correlation between the place and the number of points.

What is the conclusion?

• The website must work efficiently for the user (not for algorithms of Google Page Speed, or other tools) – a slow work of a website will not make people using it, and this, in turn, affects behavioural factors that influence the positioning of the website in search results (average time spent on the page, bounce rate, number of views).
• Tools provide objective information about speed of loading – do not limit yourself to only one tool, people who have more advanced technical knowledge can use, for example, GT Metrix or webmaster mode in a web browser.
• According to Google, the website that works properly in the terms of speed gains at least 90 points in PageSpeed (out of 100) – unfortunately, the tool may give inadequate results – e.g. pages that load "in the twinkling of an eye" receive lower scores, such as the merce.com produced in the PWA technology, which mobile version reached only 15 points.

Print screen from PageSpeed Insights with a fragment of the analysis of the site pl.merce.com

Such situations happen because the PageSpeed Insights includes elements of UX (Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift) in its research,  and some of the data is taken from the Chrome User Experience Report. To sum it up:

• The Google tool (PageSpeed Insights) is not perfect, but allows for quick and easy in carrying out testing, thanks to which we will determine what should be optimized – please note, however, that the number of points is not the only feature to take into account.
• Speed = performance – according to Akamai Technologies research, already 100 milliseconds of delay in loading the website may result in a 7 % decline in conversion.
• Speed is extremely important for complex websites, on which the search engine has hundreds or even thousands of subpages to browse, and, what is worth noting, from one day to the next there is more content to index. A slowly working website means less frequent visits of bots, and therefore slower indexing.

It turns out that even for services using well-known CMS systems it was problematic to gain a large number of points in PageSpeed Insights – e.g. https://www.drupal.org/ in the test received only 23 points.

Print screen from PageSpeed Insights with a fragment of the drupal.org page analysis
 

Conversion rate vs. speed

Along with the speed of the website, there is an increased likelihood of activities that benefit the company, e.g. purchases. The HubSpot research shows that 47 % of customers expect the website to load within a maximum of 2 seconds. In turn, mPulse Mobile tests showed that:

• sites that load within 2.4 seconds a conversion rate reaches 1.9 %,
• after 3.3 seconds - 1.5 %,
• after 4.2 seconds - less than 1 %,
• after more than 5.7 seconds the conversion rate reaches 0.6 %.

Together we will analyze your needs and advise you on how to make your site more effective. Make an appointment for a free consultation.

What is more, according to Google, 53 % of mobile users leave the site as it loads longer than in three seconds. In 2018, Google updated the algorithm connected with website speed – it has become an important ranking factor since then.

Fragment of infographic Why Faster Page Load Time is Better For Your Website; Source: skilled.co
 

We cannot forget that the conversion rate is also influenced by the layout of the website and the content and images contained within it. However, optimizing your site's speed will certainly affect your conversion, even if your site still needs to be improved in other areas.  
 

Reasons for overloading of the site

As my experience has shown, the elements that are responsible for overloading of your website are related to:

• external java scripts,
• internal java scripts,
• images on the page.

Optimization of the website in terms of loading speed should begin with examining the above-mentioned factors. Only then can you move on to other tasks related to this issue. I recommend using the browser functionality, in my case it is Firefox Web Developer Tools > Network. In the next part of this article, I will refer more to this.

Mozilla Firefox section of functionalities (tools) for web developers
 

External scripts – it may happen that the website is overloaded with scripts from affiliated businesses, that are to support the functioning of your website (e.g. TradeTracker, Clickonometrics), analytics (Google Analytics, Gemius), UX optimization (e.g. Optimizely, Hotjar). It is true that these tools support an efficient work, but if there are too many of them, the website may be overloaded. A problem arouses because you should unplug the tool from the website after using it. I will provide examples – I often observe that, for example, long after the analysis is done, the Hotjar script is still on the page. When it comes to AB testing tools, the situation is similar. They are used for testing, but many companies use them as a help for implementing "sustainable" changes.

The simplest program to check how many external scripts are on your page is the extension Ghostery.

Analysis of the Ghostery for udemy.com
 

The more complex tool is builtwith.com. However, by using it we receive much more information.

A part of the analysis of builtwith.com for udemy.com
 

The page would work faster when the unnecessary and unused scripts are deleted. When it comes to  external scripts (those that cannot be deleted from the page), I recommend delaying their loading, e.g. by the Defer extension, or the Google Tag Manager.

In the compendium of knowledge of the website speed, which we published in the "Academia" section of the ideoforce.pl, you may read about internal scripts, file and code optimization, images on the website, wrong use of photos, or overloaded graphics. What is more, you will see how the work with PageSpeed Insights looks like and learn about tools for testing page speed.