Is not getting the basics right harming your SEO?
Effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can mean the difference between a site that gets results and one that does not. However, many organisations receive conflicting advice about what contributes to higher natural (or organic) search listings. How can an organisation improve their SEO? Using backlinks, infographics, blog posts, social media or site speed?
Before Lesniak Swann start exploring these options with a client we like to ask more fundamental questions. The starting point for this is often: ‘is the site safe, secure and up-to-date?’ and ‘are there any technical issues?’. If there are, this is the first step.
So, what is site speed and how important is it?
Google’s algorithm is constantly changing and evolving but put simply, Google will rank sites that give a better ‘experience’ to the user in organic search listings than those that don’t. The reason? Many users will not make the connection between ‘the web’ and ‘Google’ and they (Google) don’t want to lose those users to a competitor like Microsoft.
‘Site speed’ is the time it takes for a web page to load. Google started ranking sites on Page Load Time in 2010 (1) and this is becoming a more important factor in how sites index in organic search. Ranking sites by how quickly they load was initially a response to the rapid increase in traffic from mobile devices. Now, with most internet traffic 2 coming from mobile devices Page Load Time has become a much more important signal for Google in how its algorithm crawls and subsequently ranks sites in their natural listings.
How can site speed be increased?
There are some basic steps any organisation can take to increase the speed of their website.