Pagespeed – Loading speed
Do you know this: you stare expectantly at your smartphone and wait for a website to load. Actually, everything should be very fast and smooth because you have excellent bandwidth, but still nothing happens. In the end, you decide to look elsewhere for the information you need/want. You might well miss out on the most relevant facts to solve your problem or need, but you simply don’t have the time/lust to wait any longer. This is also how your customers will feel if they have to put up with too long loading times on your company website, for example. In the worst case, a user experience does not take place at all or is massively restricted. In addition, the loading speed (pagespeed) now officially has a direct influence on Google’s ranking.
Loading speed
Since July 2018, the so-called page speed in the mobile area has become a real ranking factor, analogous to desktop orientations. So far, the evaluation regarding this has not been particularly differentiated, but the loading speed should always be taken into account, especially in connection with SEO content. Initially, only pages that are slower or faster than average will be upgraded or downgraded. However, the procedure will probably become more and more granular.
Like other ranking factors, the pagespeed factor has only a low value compared to the influencing giants, such as backlinks (which we will come to later) and content. This means that pages with good content will usually rank better than fast pages with mediocre content, despite long loading times.
There are many assumptions circulating on the web about when a page is fast and when it is not. These assumptions range from vague statements à la “fast enough for the user” to concrete time specifications, such as “no longer than 3 seconds”, “at least 1.5 seconds” or similar. Search Console classifies downloading a page in more than 3 seconds as (too) long. Times between 1.5 and 3 seconds are good average. According to Google’s John Mueller, however, the search engine leader so far really only differentiates between slow and fast.
You can easily test the page speed of your website using the Google Pagespeed Insights Tool. Here you should at least land in the top third. Google’s employee Gary Illyes is a bit more specific: With regard to mobile, it is absolutely sufficient to achieve a value of 85.
It is still relevant to explain why Google accepts pagespeed as a ranking factor and why you as a website operator should pay attention to fast loading times. First of all, it is again about the user experience. Especially on smartphones, there is often only a relatively small bandwidth available. Already inherently sluggish websites additionally delay the loading processes, which makes the user’s experience all the worse. Secondly, the crawling of websites that already load quickly at their base is much more efficient, which saves Google money.
According to a statement by John Mueller, pages that require more than 2 seconds for the Google bot to download are simply crawled less frequently than fast pages. If your website is not conspicuously slow, you don’t have to worry about being considered much less by the bot. Nevertheless, pagespeed already plays a certain role in the big SEO picture and will probably become even more important in the future.
Images and graphics have a large share in the loading delay of websites. In terms of perfect SEO content and page speed, these should always be kept in mind. If such elements are too large, you may notice that they take a long time to upload. This will add up to the mass of several images when they are finally published and will have a negative effect on the pagespeed.
So always use the smallest possible picture elements. This does not primarily mean the pixel size, but the file size in KB or MB. If necessary, you can and should simply compress the corresponding files using an image editing programme or a similar tool. It is important to choose a compression method that is as loss-free as possible. After all, you do not want your visitors to experience a negative user experience due to poor resolution – for example, in the case of an important, meaningful infographic.
Short and simple URL
Both humans and machines, in this case search engines, value simplicity. Both find it easier to read an easily identifiable URL than one that may contain a cryptic string of characters. Search engine algorithms or crawlers can deal better with comprehensible URLs and consequently rate them more positively in the ranking. In addition, simple and short URLs in the SERPs are more likely to entice users to click on them than longer and more complicated forms. This means that the click rate on a website can be increased significantly. This in turn serves the search engine as an indication of the relevance or popularity of corresponding content. In the end, at best, it once again conveys a good user experience.
URLs play only a secondary role for perfect SEO content, but without the optimal alignment of these addresses, even the best content cannot develop its full SEO effect. Thus, in the context of creating SEO content, speaking URLs are particularly relevant for success.
Talking URLs are the most useful for users. With them, it is already clear from the structure what the respective page and its contents are about and what information users can expect. In addition, navigation on a website is more comprehensible when using speaking URLs. For example, users can find out at a glance which sub-page they are currently on and can navigate directly via the URL by making small adjustments – deleting or adding terms.
On the other hand, speaking URLs also help Google and Co. to draw initial conclusions about the content provided on a page. In this context, it is again appropriate to include the main keywords.
However, it is more important to target the URL to your users, as your customers. If they discover the word they used for their search in the URL displayed on the SERPs, their willingness to follow the link usually increases significantly. However, you should refrain from using very many keywords in one URL. Such behaviour can be interpreted by search engines as keyword stuffing, which can cause you to quickly lose places in the ranking.
These other typical mistakes must also be avoided at all costs when creating URLs:
- The use of capital letters: Since Google indexes “case sensitive”, meaning that each different spelling means a new URL, you run more of a risk of generating duplicate content when using capital letters.
- The use of umlauts: Umlauts can cause problems, especially in international SEO. They are largely not supported in domains and URLs and can therefore cause confusion for users and search engines.
- The inclusion of hashtags: Basically, search engines ignore everything that is in a URL after a hashtag. If a hashtag has to be used in a URL, it is likely that this subpage will not be crawled and indexed automatically.
- The use of underscores: You should always refrain from using underscores within URLs, as search engines interpret them as connectors and not – as often intended – as separators. Always use hyphens to separate words.
- Create nested URLs: Websites with deep click paths usually lead to very long URLs. If keywords or filler words are then artificially strung together, the chaos is often perfect. Avoid long paths and also deep page structures.