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The importance of Pagespeed
Why is speed important for search engines?
PageSpeed
The speed of a website is very important for the ranking of a website and, of course, for user-friendliness.
Who hasn't experienced this? You visit a website and it just won't load. At a certain point, everyone stops and looks for an alternative that can be used properly.
So if you're going to the trouble of getting visitors to a website, speed is crucial to the success of the campaign. If you lose half of your users because the site is simply far too slow, then you also lose half of your potential customers.
Why is speed important for search engines?
Search engines want to offer their users the best possible user experience. If a website is slow, this user experience is obviously negatively affected. This is why search engines prefer fast websites in their rankings.
Google, for example, obviously uses the results of its own PageSpeed Insights test for ranking in the search results.
A good speed score therefore immediately moves a website up the rankings. It has often been observed that slow websites do not get beyond a certain ranking. This is especially true for highly competitive keywords.
Even with a slow website, your own company name or very specific content can be found easily. The situation is quite different for keywords with very high competition. If the test is in the red zone, the website will simply not make it to the top. However, the aim must always be to be among the top 3 rankings on Google so that you really get a relevant proportion of visitors.
Medium-term interaction through speed
The real SEO experts have been taking into account the influence of so-called user signals on the ranking for over 10 years. For a long time, Google did not want to confirm that user behavior influences the ranking. This has now been confirmed by Google following a court case.
The basic idea is relatively simple. If a website is ranked number 1 for a keyword, but nobody clicks on the search result, why should this website be ranked number 1? In this very simple case, the website will lose its ranking after a few weeks at the latest.
However, the use of user data goes even further. Let's imagine a website is ranked number 1 and users regularly click on the search result. However, instead of actively using the website, most users return to Google Search and click on the result in second place. Most users stay there, click frequently and carry out conversions.
Google therefore has the signal that users find the website in 2nd place significantly better. In this case, the rankings are swapped so that users have a better user experience.
This second point is where the speed of the website comes into play. If the page loads quickly, it is much more likely that the user will stay on the website. The user signals improve accordingly and improve the ranking over time.
Of course, it can be argued that there are a whole range of other points that influence the user experience. These include points such as the correct display on cell phones and much more. Here too, KAB Page offers a whole range of solutions.
Speed has a very significant influence on user signals. Moreover, this aspect can be understood intuitively even by a layman. We have therefore used this extremely important factor as an example of the significance of user signals.
Once you understand the principle of user signals, you will also understand why an appealing website is so important. You should always think about how you can generate real benefits for the user and also communicate directly to the user that they will find what they are looking for on the website.