What Is Page Speed & How to Improve It

What Is Page Speed?

Page speed (also called “load speed”) measures how fast the content of a page loads. From an SEO standpoint, having a fast page speed is essential.

Many factors, such as your web hosting and your page size, affect page load speed. Page speed also differs on the desktop and mobile versions of a page.

In this article, you’ll discover how page speed affects SEO, find tools to measure it, and learn ways to improve it.

Why Is Page Speed Important for SEO?

Page load speed is a confirmed ranking factor on desktop and mobile.

In other words:

Faster loading times (along with other important signals) can contribute to higher rankings.

Page speed affects your search engine rankings because slow sites negatively affect user experience.

In fact, the probability of bounce almost triples if your page takes longer than three seconds to load, according to Google.

But it’s important to clarify:

“Page speed” is not a single metric. It acts as an umbrella term.

Why?

Because there are many ways to measure page speed. (Check out some tools that do so below.)

Say a user types a domain into their web browser and presses “enter.”

After a short time, the site opens.

Sometimes, the first thing the user sees is a blank page.

A few milliseconds (or seconds) later, users see some elements. Maybe a block of text or an image.

At a certain point, the user can interact with the page. They can click a button, for example.

While users wait, the content on the page might move around as...