Google has been considering site speeds since around 2010, initially on desktop and then on mobile devices starting in July 2018.
Initially, the information on site speeds was not very detailed, but eventually, the Core Web Vitals (CWV) reports were introduced in Google Search Console (GSC). This allowed us to identify and address specific issues that were affecting site speeds, rather than simply being labeled as slow.
In early 2024, there will be some changes, but the fundamental speed issues remain the same. Therefore, regardless of the terminology, it is important to ensure that your website is fast in order to improve its ranking and conversion rates.
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What Can You Do?
If you haven’t already, make sure you have a Google Search Console account and gather information about your entire domain, not just the prefix version. If you’re unsure about what you have, you can find more information here.
This will generate the Core Web Vitals report, which shows the performance of pages on mobile and desktop. The results will be categorized as poor, good, or in need of improvement, and you should focus on the mobile results first. Making changes incrementally will likely have an impact on both mobile and desktop results.
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There are other tools available to check page speeds, with Google’s own Lighthouse reports being the preferred method. You can access this through Chrome by using the inspect element tool. More information can be found here.
It’s best to run this tool in an incognito browser to remove any Chrome plugins and extra scripts from the results. You can also run these tests in bulk using Screaming Frog or other tools.
How To Fix a Slow Website
This is the challenging part. Once you identify the slow aspects of your site, you can start making the necessary changes.
Some fixes will apply to the entire site, such as enabling text compression, gzip or Brotli, optimizing image formats, and others.
Some fixes will be specific to templates or improving your coding, such as minifying HTML and CSS or addressing issues with a particular template. For example, if all your blog pages are categorized as poor, the issue is likely with the template or a plugin used on each of these pages, rather than something affecting the entire site.
Of course, there may still be certain pages that require more specific attention. Your development team will need to work on these pages to ensure they function as intended.
If you are an SEO professional and unsure about any development-related tasks, it’s always safer to ask for assistance rather than diving in without proper knowledge. It’s better to be cautious and prevent unnecessary work or undoing previous work.
There are numerous reasons why a website may be slow, so we can’t list them all, but here are some common issues we often see:
Images being too large in pixel size, such as using full images as thumbnails.Outdated image formats.Uncompressed images.Unused code.Outdated plugins, especially on WordPress.Sites not utilizing compression.Images and resources being loaded when they are not visible on the screen.
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Why Should You Do This?
If you’re reading this, you probably already know why. Improving your site’s speed will help enhance your rankings and make your domain more competitive, bringing you closer to the number 1 spot.
However, page speed is not the sole determining factor. You can have a perfect 100/100 page speed score and still not rank well, while a slow site can still rank at the top position.
Your goal should be to have the fastest website in your niche and outperform your competitors. Don’t worry about what unrelated sites are doing, but focus on improving your page speeds to gain an advantage over competing websites and give your overall SEO efforts a boost.
