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How Website Speed Affects Both SEO and User Satisfaction

by Dennis Lazard · Written October 10, 2024 · Updated October 29, 2024

ESA Digital
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Blog
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How Website Speed Affects Both SEO and User Satisfaction

A business website serves many purposes. It helps raise brand awareness by providing the business with online visibility. Also, the website helps attract customers and clients and increase sales. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must to achieve this goal. Furthermore, you should ensure that the visitors are satisfied.

Now, there is one simple factor that could prevent the website from serving its purpose. That is website speed. Expectedly, a slow website will not satisfy the users, But what is its connection with SEO? We will explore this topic in this article.

Continue reading to discover how website speed impacts both SEO and user satisfaction.

The Importance of Website Speed for SEO

Search engines like Google want to give users the best experience possible. It uses different ranking factors to ensure that. The main pillars behind SEO are relevance, backlinks, and keyword optimization for content. You also should not overlook website performance, especially the loading time.

Google uses a set of performance metrics to rank websites. This set is called the "Core Web Vitals." It focuses on measuring the user experience on a page.

Core Web Vitals is composed of three primary elements. Two elements are related to website performance. These are the "Largest Contentful Paint" (LCP) and the "First Input Delay" (FID). TLCP measures loading speed, while FID measures responsiveness.

Largest Contentful Paint

LCP looks specifically at the largest element on a webpage. Suppose it loads fast. Google will see it as a sign that your website is well-optimized.
Your goal is to make the element load within 2.5 seconds after the visitor has opened your website.

First Input Delay (FID)

The FID measures responsiveness and should be below 100 milliseconds. When a user clicks on a button, your website should immediately execute the function connected to it. Likewise, if they click a link, your website should immediately redirect them to the new page.

What if these conditions are not met? Your website will rank lower than the more responsive competitors.

Mobile-First Indexing

You should also know about Google’s switch to mobile-first indexing. It means that Google looks at the mobile version of the website first. This decision makes a lot of sense since most internet users are using their mobile phones.

That said, you should also consider that fact. Since most of your visitors are using their phones, you should improve your mobile website's speed. Optimizing the desktop version is still important. However, optimizing this version should be your priority.

Bounce Rate and Dwell Time

The website speed also affects the bounce rate and dwell time. These factors are also important for SEO. Users will leave your website if it is still not fully loaded after 3 seconds. That increases the bounce rate. And if they left after 3 seconds, there is not much dwell time.

When visitors do that, it also means they did not interact with your website at all. They weren't able to read your content or make a purchase. Basically, they gained nothing from their visit.
As discussed above, search engines aim to promote websites that offer value to their visitors. No-gain visits like these will hurt your ranking on the search engine results page.

How To Speed Up Your Website

Here are a few tips for optimization:

Optimize Images

Large images make a page slow. Use reliable image compressors to reduce file sizes without compromising the quality of an image. Also, use the file formats JPEG, PNG, or WebP.
You may also want to look at lazy loading. It is a method that only loads the images when they are actually needed. As a result, your web pages will load faster.

Minify CSS, HTML, and JavaScript

Excessive code also slows a site. Consider minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. Remove extra characters like empty spaces or comments. Furthermore, you should also remove dead and redundant codes.

Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN stores copies of your website on servers placed in various locations throughout the globe. Whenever a user accesses your site, their browsers choose the servers nearest to them. It helps reduce load times and increase website speed.

Leverage Browser Caching

Caching lets browsers store frequently accessed resources, like images, CSS files, and so on. By enabling this feature, repeat visitors will not need to redownload every element of your website. Since there are fewer tasks for the browser, it will improve your website loading speed.

Choose Fast and Reliable Web Hosting

The performance of the hosting server directly influences how quickly your site loads. With that said, it is important to choose high-quality hosting providers.

Look for one that offers advantages, such as optimized servers and faster data transfer speeds. These can significantly reduce the load times of your website.

While hosting services like Hostinger may be more expensive, the benefits of faster, more reliable performance are often well worth the investment.

Reduce HTTP Requests

Every element of a webpage requires an HTTP request. More requests mean slower loading times. So, we recommend removing extra images and scripts from your web pages.

Conclusion

Website speed is one of the most important factors in SEO. It also makes or breaks the user experience.

A slow website will push visitors away even before they can do anything on the website. Once the search engines see that, they will recommend your website less and less.

On the other hand, visitors will find browsing through a fast website satisfying. The best thing is that besides boosting your website ranking, this can also increase conversion rates.

By following the tips provided above, you can improve your website's speed and performance. You should optimize your images and code and reduce the number of HTTP requests to start.

If you need support, our team at ESA Digital, an award-winning SEO agency, is here to help. With our expertise, we can ensure your website performs optimally and achieves high rankings in SERPs.