Does Homepage load-speed affect other pages rankings noticeably?

[liquardo]

I'm wondering if it's worth making a more complex, sexier looking homepage with lets say Elementor which might load slow,
in comparison to the usual boring list of posts?

I'm only looking to rank internal pages aka the articles themselves and don't care about ranking the homepage itself,
so would it be a good idea or should I try to keep the homepage as fast and lightweight as possible?

A unique design with lot's of images, graphics etc. would definitely improve the bounce rate from the home page itself.

 

[Sheepp]

Doesn't affect.

Speed is page-wise not site-wise.

 

[Roger Marquez]

Doesn't affect.

Speed is page-wise not site-wise.

You´re contradicting yourself I believe.

If speed is a "page-wise" element (and I agree 100% with you) having a slow loading homepage will have a cascade effect on the rest of the site. Especially, if the homepage is driving the most traffic to your site.

How come?

If the homepage is the page with the most internal links and it takes 5+ seconds to load, people might get upset and just hit the back button and click on another result in the SERP so, inner pages on your site (interlinked to the homepage) won´t get those visits.

Again, this is assuming your homepage is one of the top pages on your site driving organic traffic. Otherwise, it won´t affect as much.

But, think about it, if the page with the most internal links to inner pages and the one driving the most clicks or organic traffic suddenly takes a lot of time to load...What do you think will happen?

My 2cc

 

[liquardo]

You´re contradicting yourself I believe.

If speed is a "page-wise" element (and I agree 100% with you) having a slow loading homepage will have a cascade effect on the rest of the site. Especially, if the homepage is driving the most traffic to your site.

How come?

If the homepage is the page with the most internal links and it takes 5+ seconds to load, people might get upset and just hit the back button and click on another result in the SERP so, inner pages on your site (interlinked to the homepage) won´t get those visits.

Again, this is assuming your homepage is one of the top pages on your site driving organic traffic. Otherwise, it won´t affect as much.

But, think about it, if the page with the most internal links to inner pages and the one driving the most clicks or organic traffic suddenly takes a lot of time to load...What do you think will happen?

My 2cc

Thanks for brainstorming, that definitely sounds logical. I obviously use lazy-loading for all images so people won't be staring at a blank page at all.

In my case, the homepage is like 1-2% of the traffic and I think even that is from going to it from other pages or a few from Google Business listing. Then the homepage being a boring list, bounce rate is maxed out.

Currently homepage doesn't really have the most internal links, just like 10 of the latest posts in a list, which is the default Astra layout.

Obviously you shouldn't fill up any page with SO MUCH garbage that it would take like 5+ seconds to load, but def longer than other pages.

 

[Roger Marquez]

I obviously use lazy-loading for all images so people won't be staring at a blank page at all.

Not all images need to be lazy-loaded. Just the one below the fold. Make sure above-the-fold images are excluded from lazy loading if you will have LCP issues.

Currently homepage doesn't really have the most internal links, just like 10 of the latest posts in a list, which is the default Astra layout.

Check the Google Search Console to see which pages are driving the most traffic and which pages have the most internal links. Those are the pages you will need to prioritize.

Obviously you shouldn't fill up any page with SO MUCH garbage that it would take like 5+ seconds to load, but def longer than other pages.

100% agree!

 

[TitanTopRank]

This won't be putting any effect on the other pages because the page load speed is different for pages.

 

[seomaster5]

Every page should load fast. If you do not ensure this, user experience is affected and they will leave the website asap. This will have major negative effect on ranking.

 

[rapidseedbox]

Elementor should be avoided. In my opinion its easy for beginners and good for some small projects where you need your website up and running asap, but i dont think any serious website will use elementor. Its very bloated. If you are just ranking articles and other pages, sure, homepage doesn't matter much for google, but it still matters for your visitors. Imagine visiting a speedy page article and then going to a home page that needs 5x time to load.

 

[liquardo]

Elementor should be avoided. In my opinion its easy for beginners and good for some small projects where you need your website up and running asap, but i dont think any serious website will use elementor. Its very bloated. If you are just ranking articles and other pages, sure, homepage doesn't matter much for google, but it still matters for your visitors. Imagine visiting a speedy page article and then going to a home page that needs 5x time to load.

What tool would you recommend for building a good looking homepage that isn't 'bloated'?
I feel like Elementor gets a bad rep for people who never actually used it.

People seem concerned about the user experience, talking like it using Elementor would cause the page to load unnaturally long and being a blank page while it loads to completion, which obviously is not the case.

 

[Starblazer]

Currently, page loading speed is a weak signal. If you take care of everything else and the users won't leave your site because it loads slow, then you can ignore this aspect.

 

[viollemri0n]

I'm wondering if it's worth making a more complex, sexier looking homepage with lets say Elementor which might load slow,
in comparison to the usual boring list of posts?

I'm only looking to rank internal pages aka the articles themselves and don't care about ranking the homepage itself,
so would it be a good idea or should I try to keep the homepage as fast and lightweight as possible?

A unique design with lot's of images, graphics etc. would definitely improve the bounce rate from the home page itself.

keep the homepage as fast and lightweight as possible.
you can still achieve fast and lightweight, while having sexier and fancier homepage at the same time.
and also,

Currently, page loading speed is a weak signal. If you take care of everything else and the users won't leave your site because it loads slow, then you can ignore this aspect.

don't listen to this.
any advice encouraging you to build slow loading site should always be ignored.

 

[rapidseedbox]

What tool would you recommend for building a good looking homepage that isn't 'bloated'?
I feel like Elementor gets a bad rep for people who never actually used it.

People seem concerned about the user experience, talking like it using Elementor would cause the page to load unnaturally long and being a blank page while it loads to completion, which obviously is not the case.

I used elementor and its definitely the case. Its not just user experience but also SEO that is affected. With elementor and its plugins and all that you will probably need, my average load speed was about 5 seconds. And that was when it was optimized!
Also mobile experience tends to be much bigger problem than the desktop one.

Best way is to know your way around CSS and HTML. Also integrated gutenberg for wp can do literally everything that elementor does, it just requires time to adapt to it, but it does it much better and results are much faster, even if you use tons of other plugins to support it.