Is Low Mobile Page Speed Killing Your Site Traffic?

You’ve been expending much of your resources in constantly updating your site content, reviewing your backlink profile and increasing your online review count. Yet, despite your utmost effort, nothing seems to be working, as you notice a visibly steady decline in organic traffic.

If you’re being hit with a feeling of déjà vu as you read this – then it may just be time for you to test out your mobile page speed.

Just last year, Google announced its Speed Update, stating clearly that it would only affect pages delivering the slowest experience. In a mobile-first generation, this means that your site ranking is highly-dependent on mobile experience and speed.

So, how can you tell if your site is too slow?

Here’s how to determine whether or not your site’s current mobile page speed score is hurting your traffic, as well as some tips and tricks to help you get up to par.

PageSpeed insights tool

While there are plenty of tools a business owner can make use of to test site speed – why not utilise Google’s own PageSpeed Insights Tool. Since it is based upon Google’s own standards, if you end up with a good score here – it’s probably safe to assume that the results will be similar with any other online testing tool.

Do individually review all your top-performing pages. If you end up with a score in the single digits or anywhere below 50 – take that as a sign that you’ll have some work to do.

Click here to test your website’s speed: https://pagespeed.web.dev/?utm_source=psi&utm_medium=redirect

How to correctly assess your page speed

For those who want to be able to assess whether or not your page speed is damaging your site traffic, here are 3 steps to take:

Step 1: Run a test using PageSpeed Insights on at least 5 of your competitors’ sites: check how well you are doing in comparison to the list of competitors who are currently ranking higher than you. Keep a lookout for new players, and run this test at varying periods since scores may be affected by server loads.

Step 2: Run the same sites through a traffic estimator: websites such as Spyfu, Ahrefs or SEMrush are great examples that allow you to take a look at a website’s 2-year trend lines.

Step 3: Make a record of the top-level SEO metrics: track page word counts, domain authority and how many internal and external links a website has – taking note of your most important SEO metrics and keeping track of it overtime.

Quick fixes to implement

If your results suggest that your mobile page speed score is far lower as compared to competitors’, here are a few quick fixes you can implement ASAP – most of which will be covered in more detail when you join our SEO course!

Get rid of sliders: image sliders can have a major detrimental effect on site speed. To see if it’s worth getting rid of – switch it off and run it through the speed test again to see how if there are any major changes to loading speed. If you really like the effect of a slider, try selecting a single image and use a text overlay – remember to work in a staging environment to avoid affecting your live site.

Use only the latest image formats: image optimisation is key to SEO success. JPEG XR, JPEG 2000, WebP — these are the next-gen image formats that due to their higher quality and ease of compression, tend to load a lot quicker than older formats. However, take note that WebP isn’t currently supported in Safari just yet.

Do away with unused tracking codes: check your site for unnecessary tracking codes that have yet to be removed. Avoid letting these accumulate, as they can add a lot of overhead to page loading.

If you still find yourself facing problems even after testing out these suggestions – consider engaging a Digital Marketing Agency to take over, it will definitely be well worth the investment and time saved!