With the ongoing growth of mobile browsing, optimising page speed has become an increasingly important part of every digital marketer’s strategy. But how much does mobile page speed really matter when it comes to your SEO?
Google’s Mobile-Friendly Update
Google’s recent algorithm update served to increase the importance of mobile page speeds with their ‘mobile-first’ approach to search engine rankings. For many years, SEO agency professionals became accustomed to placing more emphasis on other elements, including links, titles, content and URLs. Whilst an SEO agency can help you make sense of mobile SEO in more detail, there are a few other things to consider when pondering how important this shift is.
Faster Pages Improve User Experience
New developments in the world of search engine optimisation focus evermore on ensuring a smooth, seamless experience for browsers using a mobile device. Fast browsing is an essential when using a mobile device, and Google now rewards pages which help make things simpler for users. Page speed is one such factor, though Google remain consciously vague about exactly how much mobile page speed is affecting page rankings in search results. As any SEO agency will tell you, slower loading pages also have a higher bounce rate, meaning you’ll lose potential customers quickly if your mobile pages are slow to load.
Prioritizing Page Speeds
Google has placed an emphasis on page speeds for several years. It is certainly a worthwhile endeavour to ensure a mobile-friendly site as standard, but nonetheless this should not be seen as a fast-track to the top of search engines if all other aspects of the website are in bad shape. As a means of improving your SEO rankings, it’s never wise to isolate one aspect of SEO (even mobile page speed) from another at the expense of complimentary, equally crucial factors such as readability and relevance. Success in Google and other top search engines is invariably the combination of a variety of different optimising factors working in harmony, rather than simply mastering one element alone and ignoring the rest.
Creating Clearer, Faster Web Pages
Many of the aspects which will help improve your website’s mobile page speed will also improve its overall user-friendliness – and therefore boost its SEO. This in turn creates a powerful symbiosis which your SEO strategy benefits from year after year. It is this approach which is likely to achieve the greatest possible results with search engines, and at the very least ensure your site is not penalised by search engines for failing to meet key criteria. Our advice is therefore to invest in a mobile-friendly site, free from elements which could hinder page speed potential, as a cornerstone of your SEO strategy.
