PageSpeed Vs Page Size
-
Hi,
We all know that Google doesnt like slow loading pages, fair enough! However, for one of my websites, user interactivity is key to its success. Now each of my pages are fairly large sized (ranges in the order or 1.8 to 2.5 MB) because it has a lot of pictures, css and at times some Java script elements.
However, I have tried to ensure that the code is optimized - for example html minified and compressed, caching enables, images optimized and served through CDN, etc. In spite of high page size, my GTMetrix PageSpeed score is 93+ for most pages.
However, the number of requests served is 100+ and page loading time is 4.5s + as per GTMetrix and Pingdom.
My question is - should this matter from an SEO perspective. Is google likely to penalize me for high loading time even though I am serving highly optimized pages? I really dont want to cut down on the user interactiveness of my website unless I have to from an SEO perspective.
Please suggest. Here is my homepage, just as to give you an idea of what i am talking about:
-
Thanks Cyrus and Max,
Very good answer and I am going to work as per your suggestions
-
As Max said, from a ranking perspective, Time to First Byte seems to be the most important factor. The same author of that post offered some tips to improving time to first byte: http://moz.com/blog/improving-search-rank-by-optimizing-your-time-to-first-byte
Oftentimes, you simply have a lot of assets to load and it's difficult to cut anything back. In these cases, the order that things load becomes increasingly important for user experience (asynchronous java script, for example).
Regardless, doing everything you can to improve speed and checking with Google Page Speed Insights is usually the best advice. I've never, ever seen a website where improving speed performance didn't help with traffic metrics (wether rankings or engagement) so I believe it's an investment worth making.
-
What google really cares about is the TTFB (Time To First Byte), to check it just head for GWT, in crawl stats.
To date the general consensus is above 1s is bad and google could penalize you, below .5s is good and google could improve your ranking a little bit.
Google suggest using webpagetest to check a website performance: if you run the test for your website you will se the TTFB is not that bad: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/141124_MF_14DY/
Your overall load time is 10s and I agree is too much, it's supposedly worse your user experience, increasing your bounce rate and alienating some of your visitors. You should work to improve it, webpagetest suggest to compress images and use leverage browser cache, which are good suggestions.
Analyze closely the waterfall to investigate further and identify other areas of interventions.
-
Hi there,
I think it would improve page load if the youtube video was the last to load.
Hope it helps you.
-
You are right! Which is why I dont want to compromise on usability. Thanks for your response
-
give it some time! It should be ok. The main issue with speed should be if the users are fine with it. Think of people before SEO and you ll be fine!
-
Thanks for your response, but the images are possibly as optimized as they could be. I use ImageOptim for Mac to optimize them, they are all jpegs (stripped from all metadata) and enabled for (mild) lossy to WebP on supported browsers.
Do you feel there might be anything else that I could do?
-
Am sure you could work on the optimization a bit more, especially of the images.
none the less if you require the same structure and you are unable to change the size then I would not worry so much about it. Having a fast website is only one of the hundred of different factors that affect SEO. Just work on the other factors and it will be fine!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Webshop landing pages and product pages
Hi, I am doing extensive keyword research for the SEO of a big webshop. Since this shop sells technical books and software (legal books, tax software and so on), I come across a lot of very specific keywords for separate products. Isn't it better to try and rank in the SERP's with all the separate product pages, instead of with the landing (category) pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Best way to link to 1000 city landing pages from index page in a way that google follows/crawls these links (without building country pages)?
Currently we have direct links to the top 100 country and city landing pages on our index page of the root domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
I would like to add in the index page for each country a link "more cities" which then loads dynamically (without reloading the page and without redirecting to another page) a list with links to all cities in this country.
I do not want to dillute "link juice" to my top 100 country and city landing pages on the index page.
I would still like google to be able to crawl and follow these links to cities that I load dynamically later. In this particular case typical site hiearchy of country pages with links to all cities is not an option. Any recommendations on how best to implement?0 -
Swapping page keyword?
If we have swopped the keyword (leaflet printing) from this page http://www.fastprint.co.uk/leaflet-flyer-printing/ and moved it to http://www.fastprint.co.uk/ But the inner page is still ranking for the keyword is there a way to tell Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Duplicate Page Content
We have different plans that you can signup for - how can we rectify the duplicate page content and title issue here? Thanks. | http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=100 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=104 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=116 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=117 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=102 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=119 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=101 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=103 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=5 |0 -
Duplicated privacy policy pages
I work for a small web agency and I noticed that many of the sites that we build have been using the same privacy policy. Obviously it can be a bit of a nightmare to write a unique privacy policy for each client so is Google likely to class this as duplicate content and result in a penalty? They must realise that privacy policies are likely to be the same or very similar as most legal writing tends to be! I can block the content in robots.txt or meta no-index it if necesarry but I just wanted to get some feedback to see if this is necessary!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jamie.Stevens1 -
301 redirect for page 2, page 3 etc of an article or feed
Hey guys, We're looking to move a blog feed we have to a new static URL page. We are using 301 redirects but I'm unsure of what to regarding page 2, page 3 etc. of the feed. How do I make sure those urls are being redirected as well? For example: Moving FloridaDentist.com/blog/dental-tips/ to a new page url FloridaDentist.com/dental-tips. So, we are using a 301 on that old url to the new one. My questions is what to do with the other pages like FloridaDentist.com/blog/dental-tips/page/3. How do we make sure that page is also 301'd to the new main url?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Should i redirect this page?
Hi I have the following 2 pages: http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Funeral-Planning.aspx http://www.over50choices.co.uk/Funeral-Planning/Funeral-Plans.aspx My dilema is that google sees the words "funeral planning" & "funeral plans" as the same thing, which might explain why the "funeral plan" page is not ranked v well. My issue is that the "funeral planning" page is at category level and introduces the wider subject of funeral planning, which isnt just funeral plans, so if i 301 my "funeral plan" page i will have no where to talk about funeral plans. My question is, Is the "funeral plan" page not ranked v well because of this or do i just need better optimisation of the funeral plan page so google is clear which is the key focus for each page? Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Why my own page is not indexed for that keyword?
hi, I recently recreated the page www.zenucchi.it /ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html on the third level domain poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it by putting it on the home page. The first page is still indexed for the keyword poltrona frau brescia . But the new page is no indexed for that keyword and i don't know why ( even if the page is indexed in google ) .. I state that the new domain has the same autorithy and that i put a 301 redirect to pass his authority to the new one that has many more incoming links that did not have previous .. i hope you'll help me thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0