How Fast Is Your Site?
Did you know your site speed impacts your search rankings? There are a number of things that can impact your load time negatively, decreasing your rankings and conversions. However, there are some things that you can do to decrease your load time so that your website is more successful with users. But first, how does load time impact your website’s search rankings?
If your website loads slowly, many users will just leave the site. On average, most users will wait between 6-10 seconds before leaving a page and the average eCommerce site takes up to 7 seconds to load. According to a Kissmetrics blog, 47% of consumers expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less, meaning many sites are falling short of expectations and in turn losing prospective customers. Not only are you losing customers visiting your slow loading site, Google may rank you lower. As of 2010, Google started taking into account load time when determining search rankings. So if you find yourself on the 10th page, you may be having some SEO issues and load time may be the culprit.
Here are some things that may be slowing your load time:
- How many images do you have on your site? Loading your page up with tons of images, or using large images that take up a lot of space will slow your load time. Choose relevant images and optimize them for your page.
- Watch out for external embedded media. Embedding things like YouTube videos can slow your load time and keep your rankings low.
- Limit the widgets you decide to incorporate into your website. Widgets can be things like clocks, tickers, and other applications that have limited functionality.
- Your website’s coding may have not been done efficiently or it’s too dense your site may be struggling to load. This is where a web developer comes in…hiring a skilled developer that understands SEO and load time will code your site so that the load time is no longer a problem.
- Hosting could also be an issue. Choose a hosting service that will fit the needs of your business. Fusion Group USA offers a number of hosting packages with different amounts of web space and bandwidth, and we can help you select a package that will work best for your site.
Loading times impact not only your rankings on search engines, but also the user experience on your site. You don’t want people abandoning your site because of slow loading times, and you want to be found on search engines. Overall, slow load times could eventually hurt your business. If you’re in the process of the building a website or if you’re concerned with the load time of your current site, Fusion Group USA can help you. Not only do we have a team of talented and creative website designers and developers, we also have an in-depth knowledge of SEO. Call today or use our Contact Us form to discuss your options!
