If your website does not have a fast speed, your visitors will leave just as fast as they appeared. While the solution is to build a faster website, it is easier said than done. There are many elements as to why a page is running slower than it should. Are there too many images? Is a code not written how it should have been? Is too much of your content flash content? Are there too many ads on your page?
See how it can be confusing to know what is making your website load slowly? Add that to the fact that if you do not get these problems fixed fast, Google will take it out on you! Think of this. Google likes sites that load fast and will give better treatment to those websites that do load in a fast manner. And this will mean that you will also have a lower bounce rate, which could give you better chances of ranking higher on Google.
Google PSI scores range from 0 to 100 points. Google considers anything 85 and higher as a good score. However, a website owner should always strive to reach as close to 100 as they can in order to keep their visitors happy. After all, if a visitor does not stay on your page for very long, it means they are spending more time on your competitions page.
Consider this when thinking of page speed. If your website goes from 1 second load time to 3 seconds of load time, there is a probability that your bounce rate will increase by 23%. If your site goes from 1 second to 6 seconds, this increases by 106%. And if you go up to 10 seconds from only 1 second, there is a chance that your bounce rate will increase by 123%!
Google has said that almost every single industry on average has slow PSI scores. On average, a finance website has an 8.3-second speed, while retail has 9.8 seconds. Technology websites tend to have a higher load time with 11.3 seconds on average.
PageSpeed is not always the easiest to fix. Think of this…the average Google PSI score of a website is 8 seconds. However, the ideal time is under 3 seconds. This is a huge gap and every second counts. If you want first page in Google, you will have to work hard to get your load time to less than 3 seconds.
So how do you do that exactly? Here are some simple ways you can increase your Google PSI score.
- Take a look at your images. Do they need compressed? Your Google PSI score can be greatly impacted if you compress your images by half or more.
- Optimize your images. We hear this in SEO all the time. You need to optimize our content in order to succeed. The same is true with your images. Replace your PNG images with JPEG images to save on page size.
- Do not use landing page redirects. Use a responsive page design which will give your users a great experience no matter what device they are using.
- Take a look at your host. A poor hosting plan can affect your Google PSI score. It could be a simple change on your part in order to increase your score, such as upgrading to a different plan.
We hear a lot about what we need to do for our sites in terms of SEO. But not everyone mentions Google PSI scores. Getting a perfect score on your Google PSI will not happen quickly, but if you work hard, it can be achieved. If you are uncertain about any aspect of SEO, including Google PSI scores, consider contacting ISEOU today!