About the importance of page loading time
WHAT IS GOOGLE PAGESPEED?
The basis for evaluating a website is a system called Google PageSpeed. Google's automatic crawlers, which constantly browse the web, check the performance of the website at the same time. Essentially, Google tests six factors. The overall rating is based on these factors.
Google rates websites on a scale of 0 to 100, with a value of 100 standing for an optimal website. One of the important factors is how long the site needs to display the first content. Also important is the time that passes before a visitor can interact with the page and the time when the most important content is displayed.
Website owners can use a tool to get an overview of how their site is performing. If desired, PageSpeed Insights can perform a check. The results show how Google rates the website. The application also provides detailed information on where the page is particularly slow and how performance can be optimized.
WHAT INFLUENCE DOES PAGESPEED HAVE?
It is now known that Google uses a system for ranking the display of search results. For a long time, this system was based primarily on the evaluation of content. For example, relevant and informative websites were displayed for a search query. More recently, however, Google has also incorporated the website's performance into this ranking.
The logical conclusion is that faster websites have advantages in the search engine or websites with poor performance have disadvantages. Since search engine users rarely leave the first page of the results and even click on one of the first three results in most cases, the performance of the website is an important factor. In order to get into the optimal areas, namely the first results of a search query, it is also important to have a website with good performance.
WHAT INFLUENCES THE LOADING TIME OF A WEBSITE?
There are three main factors that determine how fast a website loads. These three are: Type of web server, format of data and hardware of the web server.
For example, web pages that contain many graphics in an uncompressed format load very slowly. Large images in BMP format, for example, are no longer up to date. This automatically leads to a devaluation in Google PageSpeed, as the page will take a few seconds to load the images. This is especially important in the mobile test. Google differentiates between performance on conventional computers and mobile devices. A smartphone is usually less powerful than a PC. The data transfer rate of mobile devices is also often limited. Google wants to optimize websites for mobile applications. Anyone using a smartphone to search for content via Google will therefore prefer results that are optimized for mobile devices in first place.
The type of web server and the type of CMS also determine how quickly a website reacts. Modern websites that use caching mechanisms and optimized scripts load much faster than websites that are based on old technology or unprofessionally programmed. The performance of the hardware is also important in this context. Each website is hosted on a server.
Crucial for the loading time are the performance of the CPU and the capacity of the RAM as well as to a lesser extent the other properties of the hardware. What is more important is the number of web servers, web pages and other applications running on that one server. Many providers offer web servers very cheaply or even completely free of charge. This is often made possible by completely overloaded servers. If the processor is running permanently at its limit and there is only little memory available, the website loads automatically slowly. Even optimized web servers with slim content won't help any more.
This means that all three components must be modern and powerful in order to achieve a high rating in Google's PageSpeed test. Google rates pages that score at least 90 points as very fast. It is important to get into this area of scoring in order to increase the reach of your own website. So if you want to achieve the longest possible reach, you can't go around investing in the hardware and software of your website. The proverb that says it should not be saved at the wrong end applies perfectly here. Surely it is possible to put a website online very cheaply or almost for free. However this will often lead to the fact that in the search results of Google the own web page plays hardly a role.
OPTIMIZE YOUR OWN WEBSITE
For the success of the web presence a professional substructure, called back-end in technical jargon, is necessary. Many IT service providers and system houses have specialised in providing companies with infrastructures with high performance. Here, class is more important than mass.
In the case of websites, it is usually the case that capacity utilisation fluctuates greatly throughout the day. Even at peak times, such as the early evening, the site must react without delay. This can only be achieved if a sufficiently large performance reserve is calculated or an effective load distribution is set up.
The second important point is the optimization of the web presence. Here numerous things have to be considered in order to receive a high rating in the Google Ranking. In addition to the technical elements that ensure fast loading times, this also includes optimization for search engines, or SEO for short. Google confirmed several times that the loading time of a website is a point in the evaluation of relevance, but other factors are still more important.
The contents remain at the top of the priority list. Web pages without relevant content are often completely ignored in search results, regardless of how fast the web server loads.
GAL Digital has many years of experience in the website optimization sector and is always up to date with developments at Google. So we optimize websites according to the current standards of Google. In this way, we make it possible for our customers' websites to achieve the best possible standing with search engines. Contact us today to find out how GAL Digital can optimize your website.