Google’s Martin Splitt discusses the importance of page speed and its impact on SEO in his latest episode of SEO Mythbusting.
Joined by Perficient’s Eric Enge, Splitt tackles page speed from multiple angles, discussing why page speed matters, what is considered “good” page speed, and how to make your page faster.
Here’s a quick summary of each point and the corresponding time stamps in the video.
Common misconceptions about page speed and ranking (0:00)
A common misconception about page speed is that page speed is a much bigger ranking factor than it actually is. Some believe that it is the most important factor, but it is not true.
Why Page Speed Matters (1:57)
Page speed is important because it reduces the pain and frustration associated with waiting for your site to load.
There are many areas in the world with poor internet coverage, and these areas should be taken into account when developing your website.
Page speed and content relevance (3:00)
Page speed is an important ranking factor, but it’s less important that fast pages appear higher than other pages with more relevant content.
Google aims to provide users with the most relevant content, but this is not necessarily the fastest content.
Average and Recommended Web Page Sizes (4:54)
There is a big difference between the average web page size and the recommended web page size.
Average web page sizes tend to be in megabytes, but in practice should be around 500KB.
Of course, the smaller the page size, the faster it loads.
“The less [kilobytes] Better,” says Splitt.
Optimizing Page Speed (5:48)
For the most part, SEO has got the basics right when it comes to optimizing page speed, but there are still some challenges.
For example, it’s widely known that minimizing image sizes improves page speed.
However, tactics like lazy loading images are not always top SEO priorities. Lazy loading helps prevent images that are not visible without scrolling until the user scrolls down the page.
Complexity of Lighthouse Reports, Data, and Scores (7:44)
SEOs are often obsessed with reports from tools like Google’s Lighthouse that estimate how recommended changes will affect your site’s page speed.
Lighthouse may estimate that a given change will speed up your page by X seconds.
Then SEOs are disappointed when they implement the change and don’t notice the immediate speed improvement.
Eric Enge reminds SEOs that most of these problems are “threaded”. This means that changes must be combined to improve speed. Not a specific fix.
Page Speeds for Various User Devices and Connections (9:18)
Be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking your site is fast, as it loads quickly on high-end smartphones.
Sites are accessed from all kinds of devices that load the site at different speeds.
Splitt suggests monitoring the devices accessing your site and optimizing accordingly.
It might even be worth buying your most frequently used device to better understand how your users are experiencing your site.
Page Speed, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), Progressive Web Apps (PWA) (11:36)
Splitt repeats what he has to say whenever there is a discussion of page speed. AMP is not a ranking factor.
AMP is important as far as page speed is concerned, but AMP itself is not a ranking signal.
A Closer Look at Page Speed as a Factor in Google Search Rankings (13:06)
Splitt concludes the discussion with a brief explanation of how page speed works as a ranking factor.
This is more or less a tie breaker in the sense that if two pages have equivalent content, the faster page will rank higher than the other.
See the full video below.
