How important is page speed going to be?

[Ravzar]

I have a new website and on GTmetrix my pagespeed is F 0% and my yslow score is A 98%. This is consistent throughout the website as pages take from 4.5s to 5.5s to load. The reason for this is that its an authority site with complex technical information that has to be displayed in high resolution photographs or else the content cannot properly be seen and enjoyed. GTMetrix indicates the images are the only issue (everything else is 100% save for browser caching which is 80% and redirects and cache validator at 92%) If I reduced the quality of the images I would make the content far worse. Right now I have chosen content quality over page speed.

I use written content and high quality images. A lot of my competition uses videos. Their pages probably have a better page load speed because of videos being used. However, because they use videos and not written content the keywords they are ranking for are quite low competition. For example one of the main keywords in AHREFS shows 2.1k searches and 6 competition which is pretty crazy.

 

[bhcg101]

I have a new website and on GTmetrix my pagespeed is F 0% and my yslow score is A 98%. This is consistent throughout the website as pages take from 4.5s to 5.5s to load. The reason for this is that its an authority site with complex technical information that has to be displayed in high resolution photographs or else the content cannot properly be seen and enjoyed. GTMetrix indicates the images are the only issue (everything else is 100% save for browser caching which is 80% and redirects and cache validator at 92%) If I reduced the quality of the images I would make the content far worse. Right now I have chosen content quality over page speed.

I use written content and high quality images. A lot of my competition uses videos. Their pages probably have a better page load speed because of videos being used. However, because they use videos and not written content the keywords they are ranking for are quite low competition. For example one of the main keywords in AHREFS shows 2.1k searches and 6 competition which is pretty crazy.

I've never seen page speed make or break a websites success so I don't know that I'd make it overly important. Is it a factor... yes, absolutely.. but there are tons of factors that contribute to the ranking success of any website online and that's not going to change anytime soon. There are likely other things that are far more important than page speed that I'd concern myself with if I were you, but that's just my reflective thoughts after reading your post.

 

[ContentExpert]

I've never seen page speed make or break a websites success

But it certainly can though.

 

[slighty]

I can tell you from experience that Site search ranks will vary alot if you are on Mobile vs Desktop. Having good performance on page load, page fetching, and overall page size can make the difference from being 3rd (on desktop, where performance doesn't count as much) to 1st (on mobile).

Remember that not every place in the world has free internet, with unlimited resources and awesome speeds, making also your rank vary alot from country to country.

Not only that but having inefficient load may have a customer leave the website before it even loads.

 

[KingSMM]

Page loading speed is everything. In the first 3-5 seconds, the user sees what the site is. It stays or goes

 

[Ravzar]

Page loading speed is everything. In the first 3-5 seconds, the user sees what the site is. It stays or goes

Thanks for the feedback. I am more concerned about SEO though and SERP results and page speed impact on that. My niche is a bit unique in that people usually wouldn't mind waiting a little longer for the content. Compared to my competition, my content is MUCH faster even if it takes 5.5 seconds to load. The reason is all of my competition paywalls the same content and/or requires sign up and email verification before you can access it.

 

[Mission IMpossible]

Any page loading time greater than 3 seconds is going to see high bounce rates anyway. So try to bring it within 3 seconds.

 

[Mr Positive]

Very important from next year on

 

[Kenobii]

As long as people can load your site under 5 few secs, you will be good!

 

[Olivia grace]

while i doing keyword research i found some keywords that google 1st page result websites have 5-10sec loading time. i doubt how they rank 1st page

 

[babythakur]

For each website Page speed is very important because page loading time greater than 3-4 seconds is going to bounce rate and this is not good for any website. it effects the website traffic and ranking.

 

[Nut-Nights]

Op don't give excuses, Google is a machine, not human. Find a way to render your pages faster than competitors.

 

[Norgenn]

thanks

 

[MisterXYZ]

Why don't you lazy load images?

Are you using CDN?

 

[sabhan]

Page speed is the lowest hanging fruit. Get the best speed to get that extra boost in SERP

 

[DarthM]

It doesn't seem to impact Youtube's rankings. Here's Youtube's Pagespeed Insights:

 

[KelvyTheBlacky]

I have a new website and on GTmetrix my pagespeed is F 0% and my yslow score is A 98%. This is consistent throughout the website as pages take from 4.5s to 5.5s to load. The reason for this is that its an authority site with complex technical information that has to be displayed in high resolution photographs or else the content cannot properly be seen and enjoyed. GTMetrix indicates the images are the only issue (everything else is 100% save for browser caching which is 80% and redirects and cache validator at 92%) If I reduced the quality of the images I would make the content far worse. Right now I have chosen content quality over page speed.

I use written content and high quality images. A lot of my competition uses videos. Their pages probably have a better page load speed because of videos being used. However, because they use videos and not written content the keywords they are ranking for are quite low competition. For example one of the main keywords in AHREFS shows 2.1k searches and 6 competition which is pretty crazy.

Page speed is not important as previously thought! Your site can still load in 40 seconds and still outrank the competition.
Brian Dean

 

[slighty]

It doesn't seem to impact Youtube's rankings. Here's Youtube's Pagespeed Insights:

View attachment 142133

If you really think the most used video sharing platform in the world since 2005, needs to care about speed performance, to be on top of all rankings, you are very wrong.

 

[MightyPedro]

if a website takes longer than 3sec to load then the user closes the website which will increase the bounce rate and hurt our search engine ranking.
sometimes its depends on the speed of the internet too.

 

[RyanHSEO]

I have a new website and on GTmetrix my pagespeed is F 0% and my yslow score is A 98%. This is consistent throughout the website as pages take from 4.5s to 5.5s to load. The reason for this is that its an authority site with complex technical information that has to be displayed in high resolution photographs or else the content cannot properly be seen and enjoyed. GTMetrix indicates the images are the only issue (everything else is 100% save for browser caching which is 80% and redirects and cache validator at 92%) If I reduced the quality of the images I would make the content far worse. Right now I have chosen content quality over page speed.

I use written content and high quality images. A lot of my competition uses videos. Their pages probably have a better page load speed because of videos being used. However, because they use videos and not written content the keywords they are ranking for are quite low competition. For example one of the main keywords in AHREFS shows 2.1k searches and 6 competition which is pretty crazy.

A page speed of 4.5s to 5.5s?! I would be looking at making that quicker, regardless of the SEO impact...