How Your Website’s Mobile Load Time Affects Your Rank on Google

ByEric Bonar Hours Categories Blog

In 2010, Google stated that they were going to begin to use site speed as a factor in ranking websites. In 2018, Google doubled down on this by stating that they intend to use site speed as a factor for ranking websites on mobile, with the intent of ensuring that people do not have to wait to find the answers to their questions. This means that if your website is not running fast, or at least faster than the average 15 seconds[1] on mobile, you will have trouble ranking on Google for anything other than your business name.

Have a Fast Host

The most important part of ensuring your site loads fast for Google is to have a fast host. Fast hosts will implement server-side caching and Gzip compression to ensure that websites are delivered fast and web pages aren’t larger than they need to be. For managed WordPress hosting, we generally use WPEngine or Siteground.

Implement Server-Side Caching and Gzip Compression (if your host doesn’t implement it already)

Server-side caching keeps your content management system (typically WordPress) from having to make the same database queries to deliver the same pages[2]. Gzip compression compresses your files, which results in faster network transfers[3]. If you’re using a fast host, there’s a good chance they’re doing both of these things already.

Minimize Your Site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

While we’re on the topic for faster network transfers, another thing that can reduce the size of the files returned from your server is minimizing your site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. This works by removing line breaks and unnecessary whitespace (like indentations) that are usually not necessary for the browser to interpret and render your web pages[4]. If you are using WordPress, we recommend the Autoptimize plugin for this, though, depending on the other plugins you have installed on your site, you may have to set up exclude rules to the JavaScript or CSS rules to avoid having Autoptimize break your site.

Optimize Your Site’s Images

However, the time and data savings achieved doing these things are minuscule compared to the savings from properly sizing and optimizing your site’s images. This is because on most sites, images make up roughly half of the portion of content your users will download[5]. For this reason, we recommend that check to make sure you are using the right formats for your images (JPEG for photos, PNG for logos, infographics, and other non-photo images, and GIF for images that need animation), that they are at the size that you intend to display them on the web page, and not larger, and that they have been optimized to remove unnecessary colors and metadata. For WordPress sites, we generally use WP Smush to optimize our images for us automatically, though there are other plugins that do this as well.

Also, if the image was generated using a vector editor, such as Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer, or Inkscape, you should seriously consider using a vector image format such as SVG, instead of a raster format like PNG or GIF. Because SVGs use shapes, numbers, and coordinates[6] instead of pixels, they can offer significant savings in file size, especially at larger image sizes. The sizes of these SVG files can be decreased even further using image optimization programs such as ImageOptim or SVGO. However, unsanitized SVGs can also present an attack vector for your site, so if you’re going to use SVG images on your site, it’s best to install a plugin like Safe SVG for WordPress so the SVGs on your site are sanitized to mitigate any vulnerabilities.

Implement HTTP/2 (formerly SPDY) and HTTPS

HTTP/2 (formerly known as SPDY) offers significant speed boosts over HTTP by compressing site headers, and by allowing many resources to be fetched with the same connection[7]. This saves time, especially on slower connections with more lag, like mobile networks. However, most browsers only support HTTP/2 over HTTPS[8], so you’ll need to implement HTTPS, which is something you should do anyways because Google is pushing hard for HTTPS everywhere, to your site to see the benefits of HTTP/2.

When you do this, make sure you use HSTS and 301 redirect the HTTP version of your site to HTTPS, so visitors and backlink juice get sent towards the HTTPS version of your site. Also make sure all your internal links use HTTPS, and all your site assets load over HTTPS. If you don’t, that called mixed content, and that will, in the best case, cause delays as browsers get redirected from HTTP to HTTPS to download pages and resources, and, in the worst case, cause the web browser to display a Not Secure message when the user is on your site, which may cause visitors to leave.

Where to Start

Google PageSpeed Insights Screenshot

If you’re not sure which one of these things are already done and which things you need to do, use Google PageSpeed Insights to diagnose your site.  And if any of this confuses you, contact us at The Crouch Group. We’ve worked with many businesses to ensure their websites are properly optimized to get the visibility in Google they need to grow.

Our Thoughts on AMP

You may have noticed that during the course of this blog article, we never mentioned AMP. AMP causes Google to create another version of your site on Google’s servers, which accumulates backlinks, making it impossible to move away from AMP without SEO damage. AMP usually isn’t necessary unless your in a niche where Google requires it for visibility, like news. If you are in a niche that receives significant traffic from Google News and Discover, it might be necessary to bite the bullet and implement AMP, but if your host is fast enough and you’ve implemented these other tips, it shouldn’t be necessary to implement AMP.

Sources

1. An, Daniel. “New Industry Benchmarks for Mobile Page Speed.” Think With Google, Feb. 2018 https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/.
2. “Server-Side Caching: Speed Up Your WordPress Website.” Testomato Blog, 4 May 2015 https://testomato.com/blog/server-side-caching-wordpress/.
3. Sexton, Patrick. “How to enable compression and gzip for page speed.” Varvy.com, 27 May 2016, https://varvy.com/pagespeed/enable-compression.html.
4. Champagne, Jason. “How to Minify Your Website’s CSS, HTML & Javascript.” Elegant Themes Blog, 17 Jan. 2019, https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/how-to-minify-your-websites-css-html-javascript.
5. “Report: Page Weight”, HTTP Archive, 1 Apr. 2019 https://httparchive.org/reports/page-weight.
6. Khanna, Abhishek. “How SVG optimization can help in improving website speed”, Imagekit.io, 24 May 2018 https://imagekit.io/blog/svg-optimization-improves-website-speed/.
7. Grigorik, Ilya & Surma. “Introduction to HTTP/2”, Google Developers, 1 May 2019 https://hpbn.co/http2/.
8. “HTTP/2 Frequently Asked Questions”, HTTP/2, 24 May 2018 https://http2.github.io/faq/.

+ posts

Similar Posts

  • Marketing vs Advertising — What’s the Difference?

    ByTim Crouch

    Many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth. Let’s start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each: Advertising: The paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers. Marketing: The systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products. After reading both of the definitions it is easy to understand how the difference can be confusing to the…

  • Are you ready for #Mobilegeddon? We are!

    ByEric Bonar

    You might have already heard that on April 21st Google launched it’s new algorithm that favors sites which are “mobile friendly”. This means that websites that are not “mobile friendly” will not show up in search results on mobile devices. Recent studies show that over 60% of people use their mobile phone for everyday activities so it is likely that this could mean a decline in business for those websites that don’t show up in search results. Is your business website ready for mobile? Here are 5 tips for surviving #Mobilegeddon. Don’t Panic! This is not the zombie apocalypse so luckily there’s no walking dead to worry about. Take the mobile friendly test to determine if your site will be impacted. Just follow the link…

  • Facebook Seeks Consumer Opinion with Relevance Score!

    ByEric Bonar

    In February 2015 Facebook released a new advertising feature “Relevance Score”. This is a rating system that is used for paid advertising on Facebook. This score is based on a 1 to 10 point scale; the higher your ad scores the more relevant your ad is deemed. Some users are finding that this is similar to a Google quality score. A Google score is based on stats between an ad and landing pages while the Facebook “Relevance Score” takes feedback and insight from you as the user into account. As a consumer you can give positive or negative feedback regarding any ad you’re seeing on your Facebook feed, giving you a voice on this social network.     How is a “Relevance Score” relevant to…

  • “Does your target market know what your car looks like?”- Email Best Practices

    ByEric Bonar

    In April Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing, one of the top 50 most influential people in sales and marketing, hosted a webinar covering email tips designed to help increase response rates. Keeping up with email best practices is a daily occurrence at The Crouch Group so we regularly research and source for the latest industry concepts. We love how Matt describes social media in this webinar. He shares that social media and email marketing are a lot like driving by someone’s house at 35 miles per hour and trying to throw something into their mailbox. Majority of the time you are going to miss, however eventually over time they will start to recognize your car. Here are a few of our takeaways and email tips…

  • THE WEBSITE

    ByEric Bonar

    When clients come into our office needing a new website many of them ask what the process is and what to expect so here’s your answer… At The Crouch Group we believe in unique, customizable and affordable websites. Our goal is to create an online representation of you and your business through your website. With that in mind, here is a snapshot of the process we utilize to build your new website.   Website Grading We take a look at your current website and score it on a 100 point scale. This scoring takes into account usability, SEO, mobile components, content, technology within the site, backlinks, social shareability, among other areas. This is the starting point to determine what your site is doing well and areas…

  • Marketing a Better Divorce Option

    ByEric Bonar

    When most people think about divorce, they think of the traditional method involving two people slugging it out in litigation. But this method often leaves behind a trail of destruction, especially if children are involved. The Collaborative Divorce process is a relatively new concept that strives to help divorce clients stay out of the courtroom and obtain the best outcome for everyone involved. Spreading the Word In October, The Crouch Group held a one-day conference in Austin with prominent attorneys from the Austin and Dallas area to teach how best to use their marketing efforts to gain more collaborative clients. We talked about the importance of explaining the collaborative divorce method to new clients, and critiqued the participants’ websites to help them understand the importance…