What Is a Good Page Load Time for SEO?
Page load time has been a hot topic for website improvement since Google’s Mobilegeddon, not just because of increased demand from mobile visitors, but also because of potential lead and customer losses. While page speed affects your search ranking and Facebook promotes Instant Articles, it’s clear that websites must speed up, but how fast is fast enough?
What amount of page loading time will customers accept, and what will cause them to close the tab and look elsewhere?
Page Load time Is a Primary Ranking Factor
Your website must be responsive to your visitors. While this may not be the answer you seek, it is one that your website visitors will value. You can continue to improve your website and better serve your visitors by monitoring your bounce rate (in Google Analytics or comparable metric trackers) and page load time (using the Chrome extension “Page Load Time” or more extensive trackers).
Why Page Loading Time Is Important for SEO
While you are aware of the obvious answer, it does not provide you with a goal to strive for. Before I get into the speeds you should (and should not) aim for, there’s something you should know: page speed numbers stink. Frequently, the same statistics are repeated and are out of date, despite the fact that technology is far from out of date and is constantly improving.
Many people base their page load time standards on a study conducted by Geoff Kenyon in which he compares website speed to the rest of the web:
- if your site loads in 5 seconds, it is faster than approximately 25% of the web
- if your site loads in 2.9 seconds, it is faster than approximately 50% of the web
- if your site loads in 1.7 seconds, it is faster than approximately 75% of the web
- if your site loads in 0.8 seconds, it is faster than approximately 94% of the web
Pingdom also shared their 2015 findings (using their own clients as the data source), revealing that the average load time for 3Mb web pages was 5 seconds. While Google in 2010 would argue that is not nearly fast enough.
Maile Ohye says in a Google Webmaster video that “2 seconds is the threshold for ecommerce website acceptability.” Google aims for less than a half-second.” Half a second is fast, or close to blinking, while two seconds is shorter than one breath—and that PageSpeed time is what they thought websites should be aiming for six years ago.
The most recent and interesting study I discovered was from the Financial Times Technology Department. They investigated how page speed influenced their developing publishing site. The study they conducted involved their specific publishing site goals and had a test group and control group, with the test group having a 5-second delay added to each page load time. They discovered the following notable facts:
- The first-second delay resulted in a 4.9% drop in the number of articles a visitor read
- The three-second delay resulted in a 7.9% drop
- Visitors read less when delays occurred
I highly recommend reading the entire article because it brings up a point that we already know: when page load times delay their interactions with the website, it becomes less desirable.
What Your Page Speed Should Be
To summarize, your website page speed should be as fast as possible… without compromising the customer experience. Google seeks the speed of a blink, whereas your website may seek the speed of a breath.
When it comes to page speed, there are many factors that contribute to your success: the browser, device, web hosting provider, and content on the page, which is why you should focus on the needs of your visitors.
For example, if you optimize your site for mobile speed but 90% of your visitors come from desktop, you’re only serving 10% of your main visitors. What aspect of your website did you remove that could affect how your desktop visitors interact with it?
