User Experience and SEO Rankings

Website performance is a key element in search engine optimisation (SEO). In the fast paced digital world that we live in today, users expect websites to load quickly so that they can be provided with a smooth and seamless browsing experience. In addition, when a website speed and performance score is low and doesn’t perform, it directly impacts search engine ranking positioning as Google will always favour high performing sites.

The Role of Page Speed in Search Engine Algorithms

Search engines, particularly Google, take a strong focus towards user experience. One of the major aspects of user experience is website performance as our research shows that slow loading pages tend to lead to higher bounce rates and less business. If a website takes too long to load, users tend to leave it right away to head straight to a competitor. This diversion from your site will send negative signals to search engine bots who are crawling your site indicating that  your website is not providing any value to the users causing down-ranking from its current positions.

Impact on Crawl Rate and Indexing

Website performance affects other SEO metrics such as crawl rate and indexing. Search engine bots have a time limit to crawl a site, if pages are slow to load then fewer pages are likely to be indexed, resulting in less visibility of the site for searches. Google has recently introduced Core Web Vitals which includes metrics based on loading speed, interactivity and visual stability that determine the page experience a site offers, impacting its SEO ranking.

Optimising Website Performance for SEO Success

Website performance improvement means optimising images, leveraging browser caching and minimising JavaScript and CSS files. Better SEO results, more organic traffic and higher conversion rates can be obtained with a swift, responsive and user-friendly website. In the digital world, besides being a technical requirement, website performance is one of the key points to achieve a prosperous and effective SEO campaign.