How does your WP website speed affect your SEO ranking

With over 200 ranking signals to worry about, dealing with SEO can be quite overwhelming. But site speed is one of the latest concerns every website owner should direct its focus on. Every user expects websites to load and work fast. Especially today, and especially on mobile devices. Which puts plenty of pressure on your WordPress website optimization. But how does your WP website speed affect your SEO ranking? Maybe in more ways than you might be aware of.

Does your WP website speed affect your SEO ranking and how?

Several studies have shown that the speed factor can influence your ranking position. However, the results can be confusing if you expect a simple explanation about how your WordPress speed performs in the real world. If you take the time to understand the multiple sides it influences, you will have a better idea of how to allocate your efforts in optimization. On the other hand, SEO experts can make it easier and deal with optimization and maintenance for you.

Tools to help you with website optimization

First of all, to solve the speed problems, there are a variety of tools available. Overall, they can monitor and give you details about why the website loads slow. This will help you decide what to do and how to find the solution. SEO WordPress Plugin is one of the most comprehensive optimization tools that give complete analytic insight into problems. In general, tools like this are necessary if you want to keep both visitors and search engines happy.

A clean and tuned engine.
Just like with an engine, you need an expert to tune and optimize the website for full performance.

The effect of speed on your WP website

Here are a couple of generally important effects speed can have on your website:

  • Website first impression
  • Search engines and the speed
  • User-experience
  • Higher conversion rate

Website first impression

You can assume that the first impression is important. Now more than ever. If a website doesn’t load in seconds, the majority of people will leave it. Overall, the bad loading speed of the WP website provides a bad user experience to visitors. Even worst, they are all going directly to your competitors. In their eyes, the owner of a slow website doesn’t care much about its visitors and looks suspicious. You will be surprised but even Google looks at it the same, in a way. To eliminate all the “what-ifs” Google is using your website speed as a ranking factor.

Search engines and the speed

Speaking of which, Google also wants and supports fast websites. Not only it’s good for users, giving them a great user experience, but it’s also good for search engines. In simple words, slow websites make search engines allocate more resources in crawling and other functions. Given these facts, it’s obvious why the major search engine like Google is including website speed as a ranking factor. At the moment, recent “speed updates” are having more effect on slow sites, ranking them down. But, it’s not completely clear how it rewards those who are already fast.

User-experience

Basically, if a visitor is served with a poor user experience, due to the slow loading, they will leave. Google tracks this user behavior and other signals and decides if your WP website deserves its ranking position. But, if you optimize your website to increase its speed, people will stay, and eventually will come back. This signals search engines that your website is relevant, useful, and simply good for users. And in a long run, will boost your ranking position.

A happy visitor amazed with the website speed on his device.
A great user experience will bring many satisfied visitors back to your WP website.

Higher conversion rate

Eventually, a well-optimized WP website will have a better conversion rate. People that wait for too long for a page to load or a paying process to complete can quickly cancel. They can, and they will. But if everything is working smoothly, they will stay. By providing them with such a quality service, you are building trust, and increasing your brand loyalty.

Clearly, website speed is one of the main concerns so far. Search engines are actively monitoring and deciding how your WP website speed can affect your SEO ranking. Even though there are other factors that have more influence on ranking positions, the speed is becoming more relevant each day. It’s something no one should overlook.

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