GOOGLE WANTS A FASTER WEB – What Every Business Owner Needs to Understand
Website speed isn’t only good for users – it’s good for Google, too. Slow websites are often slow because they’re inefficient. They may load too many large files, haven’t optimized their media, or don’t make use of modern technologies to serve their pages. That means that Google has to consume more bandwidth, allocate more resources, and spend more money.
Across the whole web, every millisecond they can save, and every byte they don’t have to process, adds up quickly. And quite often, simple changes to configuration, processes or code can make websites much faster, with no drawbacks. If you, as a business owner is not paying attention to what Google wants…. BEWARE!
FYI – Did you know that chat programs, photography and video loops can slow down the speed of a website, especially mobile?
Google has been sending some serious signals since early 2018 that sluggish loading is a problem you can no longer sleep on. This is especially true after Mobile First Indexing was implemented in July 2018 and now considers the speed of you mobile site primary in ranking consideration. In fact, if you look closely at what Google is doing, you can’t deny that 2019 will be the year of lightning speed. Keep this in mind when determining how much photography, video, and cute little movements you are adding into your website. What good is a killer website if people can’t find it because your website was penalized by Google!
Website design is not all about the marketing, it is a balance between what Google wants you to find when determining your ranking and what marketing message you want to deliver. SEO requirements in your website build is still very relevant in 2019, no matter what you have heard otherwise, especially with written content. Since Google is a computer program and can’t watch a video or look at a photo, they only way it can determine what you are marketing, in comparison to your competitors, is within the written content which includes keywords and local search terms. The “LESS is MORE” marketing strategy only applies if you don’t care about Google and its algorithm.
News UPDATE … visitors may not be reading all your content, but Google does!
Visitors will read what they want on any given site and ignore the rest. However, You as a business owner can’t ignore GOOGLE who is ‘King of the Internet” and wants what is wants, whether you are on board with its requirements or not.
Who Manages Your Website Speed?
Your web designer plays and integral part in setting the correct SEO parameters needed to rank well on Google. If your written content is below page recommended work count, overloaded with photography, and your video header loops are not optimized correctly to meet Google speed guidelines, your website may be doomed in local search results. But then again, if you don’t care about new patients finding your website who don’t know who you are, and rely solely on word of mouth referrals from your patients instead, than your website infra-structure and speed vs marketing objectives may not be a concern to you in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
Also, mentioned earlier, chat programs can also slow down the speed of the website. In this instance, your webmaster has no control over the download speed of a plugin provided by a 3rd party vendor. At Orthopreneur, we test the speed of the site with the plugin in place. If there is an issue, we let the owner know there is a problem so they can contact the vendor. It’s just one more piece to an already complicated online marketing puzzle.
How to Test Your website Speed?
For mobile SEO speed testing – Varvy.com.
Just add in your website URL and wait for your score. Your mobile speed can vary within a few points and identifies where issues lie. Orthodontic websites are photo heavy by nature so it is unrealistic to expect perfect scores. Under-optimized collateral marketing materials that are not made web ready by your design team BEFORE adding to your website like photography and video loops are the biggest offenders slowing down your website. This takes additional time and due diligence. The 2nd biggest offender is your website hosting server response time controlled by your webmaster.
- Acceptable Mobile Speed Score for an Orthodontics Website 70+ (contact your webmaster if your service response time is orange or below 70)
- Your overall Mobile Friendly score should be Green – 97+
- Google access green – YES
- Page Redirects green and no more than 1 or 2.
Desktop Speed Test – Webpagetest.org
- First 5 scores should be A
- Lack of CDN does not seem to be an issue in ranking scores
- optimization of photos and video plays a big part in this score