Why Google Site Speeds Matter

iPages have been busy ensuring all websites' loading speeds are optimised. This has involved a fair bit of testing and measurement against Google's criteria and, although it is a challenge to achieve fast page load speeds for all websites without compromising quality, we are proud of the high speeds we have obtained. 

Why are page load speeds important for SEO?  

Firstly, page load speeds are important for people using your website. If viewers or customers cannot properly browse your website quickly, their experience will be hindered and this can lead to high bounce rates and low conversions.

Secondly, site speeds have a direct impact on your SEO. In their own document, Google include site speed as a new signal within their search ranking algorithms:

'You may have heard that here at Google we're obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.' 

How have iPages increased page load speeds? 

iPages are well placed to optimise page load speeds, being a hosted solution. Earlier this year iPages made extensive efforts to increase site speeds including the automatic optimising of images.

However, we are always looking to improve our site speeds and recently continued these updates to include amending javascript handling and further work to improve image sizes.  

What does this mean for you? 

This means that, if you are an iPages customer, your website will have been optimised for site speed. You can check your site speed using the Google PageSpeed  Insight tool. 

Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to get in touch. 

Sources:

https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-speed

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html