A phone and a stopwatch are not pro SEO tools
Forget the tortoise and the hare. If your website is slow it is costing you business. 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load.
But, you say, my customers won’t be using a phone to find me*. True or not, if Google looks at your website with Mobile First, you need it to work on one.
How fast is your site?
Don’t guess – test!
Google Page Speed Insights Google makes it easy to get numbers you can use and understand. The latest edition of the tool will email test results for passing on to your webmaster.
Pingdom is also a free tool with detailed information about your website – even your competitors if you wish.
In a recent test on one of my own websites, I ran both tests and found plenty to clean up. Google Page Speed showed 73 mobile / 77 desktop. Pingdom scored a B at 650 ms. Simply by optimizing a handful of images, I was able to get my scores up to 78 mobile / 91 desktop.
Tweaking continued with an ultimate score of 79 mobile and 93 desktop. Pingdom improved to an A and only 432 ms! The only items left were the Google Fonts and the style sheet which I’m not ready to give up.
What do I need to do to improve my page speed?
- Optimize your images. Smaller files are better.
- Use a fast hosting server and avoid redirects to your home page.
- Make sure your hosting solution enables compression and browser caching.
- Clean up and minify your code.
If you need help, ask. Check first with your developer and then with a technical SEO**. They both should have access to professional level tools providing more information in greater depth.
Chances are good that you can get your site faster than the vast majority of website’s in your industry. Make sure your site is faster than your closest competition. The higher the score the better your user’s experience. The better your user’s experience – often means – the higher your site should rank.
~JoMarie
