Why Load Speed is so Important for Your Google Rankings
Google’s ranking algorithms have changed dramatically over the years, much to the distress of SEO experts who watched the websites they had successfully ‘cheated’ to the top, go plummeting down to oblivion. Business owners struggle with getting their websites up in Google rankings and none of the SEO gurus seem to have the answer anymore. But one thing we can be sure of is that the load speed of websites plays a big part in the equation. You see, rankings today are all about the user experience. How long visitors stay on a website once they click the link in the search engine results.
Why is this so important?
It’s because Google’s survival depends on people finding the results they want when they use the search engine. And their behavior when they click a link on Google, is a good indication of their satisfaction with what they find. People are also becoming more and more impatient. They want information quickly and they don’t suffer delays, so when a website takes a few seconds to load, they quickly leave to find something else. Load speed is so important to Google, they have published a tool online where website owners can check the load speed of their sites and get suggestions on how to improve it. It’s important however, to understand that load speed is not the only factor that keeps a visitor on the site –you need good, relevant, fresh content and a degree of interactivity to keep them there – but it all starts with load speed.
So how do you get your site loading quickly?
Unfortunately, most websites today are built on database driven, content management systems (CMS) like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, Click Funnels and Adobe Business Catalyst. They are intuitive, easy to use, but by nature, they are slow loading sites. This is because your content doesn’t reside in the pages of your website – it resides on a database and is pulled in and displayed on the pages as a user accesses the site. This process takes time and puts load on the server running the website, so the more people accessing the website, the slower it loads. Eventually, it reaches a point where the load becomes dangerous for the server, so it automatically puts new visitors in a wait list until someone leaves. People who are waiting, just see a website trying to load slowly, so they leave immediately, and the site automatically drops in Google search results because of user dissatisfaction. The simple answer to improve the load speed is to go back to the way we used to build pages before database driven CMS systems were invented. Pages were just simple files of content, with a bit of HTML code wrapped around them to display that content nicely - and some linked images and videos. But then we lose all that beautiful editing ability we get with a content management system. And who wants to spend months learning HTML and Javascript just to be able to update their website?
There is a simple answer
Thankfully, the next generation CMS systems, ‘flat page CMS’ systems give you the best of both worlds. They allow you to manage your content through an intuitive interface and then publish that content as a series of flat pages that make up your website. When you make changes, the flat files are simply overwritten with your changes, while older versions are kept as a back-up, in case you want to restore them. Because your website doesn’t need to access the database once it’s published, server load is dramatically reduced and the site displays almost instantly! This type of system has the added advantage of being very secure. Hackers just love databases and are always coming up with innovative ways of breaking into them – when your website is just flat pages, there’s really no way for them to access it. We are pioneering ‘Headless CMS’ technology and made the platform available to business owners in Australia, the US and UK. Businesses in those countries can now enjoy incredibly fast loading websites that display well on all devices. Responding to the demands of overworked business owners, we also pioneered ‘Design as a Service’, where business owners can pay an affordable monthly fee for a professionally designed website, regular design updates, landing pages for their campaigns and even content management.