Does Page Load Time Affect SEO Rankings?
-
I was curious about how much page load times affect rankings. Here's what I did:
- I put together a lot of interactive media on specific landing pages
- Time-on-Page from organic visitors went from 50 seconds to average of 34 minutes
- Bounce Rate decreased by 20%
- Page Load time increased from 1 second to 6 seconds and at peak times to 8 seconds (on 56KB test)
- In the meantime the page was re-indexed and re-cached
My question is three-fold:
- Would the time on page give higher rankings for keyword
- Would decreased bounce rate enhance rankings?
- Would the page load time decrease rankings?
Did anyone do a similar test? What were the results?
-
20% is repeat traffic. 80% is new. In past 2 weeks impressions increased around 30-35% and the only thing I can attribute the change to is the interactive stuff.
I have what you may call a niche market. All the competitors out there are focusing on selling products, we're offering a service on top of education. In many cases we're sharing the stuff the product companies would never want clients to know.
But it doesn't hurt to be prepared once other competitors arise, and I'm sure they're coming.
It would be good to find out about the correlation of Time on Page vs. Rankings from others that have tested this.
I'll be sure to post an update in a couple of weeks.
-
To add to Christy's well written and quite accurate response, page load time has been a key factor since Panda first rolled out. It may have been a factor before this, however Panda is when it first really took hold as a clear, change = results measure. For example, I have had numerous audit clients who had severe page load problems, and several of those have seen increased rankings and resulting traffic from organic listings solely by resolving page load speed.
In one client situation, simply by changing site templates (and resulting load speeds), the client saw a doubling of organic traffic literally overnight. To then test that this was the cause, he then did the same thing with a completely different site that had a completely different model and also saw traffic dramatically increase literally overnight.
However, given the complexity of SEO in 2012, with so many other factors, if there are other serious flaws to the SEO, just increasing page load speeds may not get the same results I've described.
Bounce rates CAN negatively impact rankings, but not purely as a stand-alone factor. It's when someone comes to your site, can't find what they're looking for, then returns to Google and then clicks to another site and does not then come back to Google. Which is also the case even if they didn't initially bounce on first landing on your site. They could also have spent more time, or visited more pages before returning to Google to re-search.
-
Yes, page load time is a ranking factor. Optimizing pages so they load quickly is listed as a best practice in Google's Webmaster Guidelines. So yes, increased page load load time may decrease rankings. It should definitely decrease traffic. Eight seconds is a looong time these days to wait for a page to load! Have you seen any changes in the SERPs since making these changes?
On the positive side, you must have some fantastic content if users are willing to wait that long for a page to load -- and stay on it for over half an hour I am curious, are you having a lot of repeat traffic?
No, bounce rates do not affect rankings. Matt Cutts has said that if a user visits only one page on a site and finds the information they need, this is a positive user experience. High bounce rates aren't positive for every site, don't get me wrong. If you have an ecommerce site for shoes and you have a very high bounce rate, meaning customers aren't browsing your offerings, writing reviews, and going through checkout, you aren't likely selling very many shoes on the site. The bounce rate is measured in GA to give you the information you need to analyze your site performance in this regard, not for the purpose of ranking your site.
Increased time on page correlates with increased user engagement. Users engage with, and engage longer, with quality content. Or at least highly entertaining content While it is not as clear-cut as to weather this is a ranking factor as is the case for page load time, Google is measuring it and they are all about rewarding websites that provide a great user experience, right?
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
-
Re-Launching Old website with New SEO Friendly Features - What should I track?
Hey Mozers, I was brought on to the team to Optimize the old website to make it more SEO friendly and I was able to get some cool features up. What Analytic Key points should I keep track of? The website launches in 2 weeks and I think Now would be a great time to start gather data bout the old site. I'd like to make sure I keep the website under a microscope to make sure there are as little errors as possible. What am I missing I already have: Page Authority Domain Authority Bounce Rate Time on page Visitors/Sessions Unique Visitors/Sessions
Search Behavior | | rpaiva0 -
Has anyone found a best practice for ranking a client who has one central office location, but a large, regional service area that they want to rank for?
All the most recent local search ranking is based upon physical addresses, but what happens when someone provides services and has staff 100 miles from that central office location, but no physical address to work with?
Search Behavior | | BehrDesign0 -
Does the title attribute affect CTR?
I've been trying to find some research or studies regarding the title attribute on links and if it affects CTR or perhaps another benefit to using it. I know that it's not a factor in search engines and there's some problems with the compatibility of it in various devices and browsers, but looking for any stats that show using could affect your CTR. Would love some actual studies versus opinions, but haven't found any.
Search Behavior | | benmarshall1 -
Google PageRank and google keyword ranks
Hi, I manage around 13 Clients for SEO and this last two weeks i have been having problems with google keyword ranking some of my clients went down almost 40 positions for some keywords other 15 other stayed the same and some just went down 1 or 5 positions. Somebody know what is happening with google? is it shuffling around positions of people? Any advice or how you do your SEO I'm willing to work together and share experiences and tactics on SEO to people that also share with me in order to build more strategies on this amazing market. Thanks.
Search Behavior | | computernc0 -
Noticed Bing UK and Yahoo UK are almost exactly the same ranking results?
I've run a few keyword ranking updates today and I've noticed that Bing UK and Yahoo UK results are almost exactly the same? This is unusual, the results for these two engines rarely tally with one another. Is anyone seeing the same?
Search Behavior | | MiroAsh0 -
Better rank VS Better Title Tag
I changed my title tag to encourage a better CTR by looking less keyword stuffed and my rank dropped from #2 to #5. So what do you think is better a title that business name first unlike everyone else who is just keywords first or a more google friendly title that looks like everyone else?
Search Behavior | | greenjoe0 -
Need to rank xxx.com to 2 locations
Hi, I have a voip service, currently my keywords are ranking good in US. But i would like to rank them for India too. As i am selling India based voip services. I have a single domain .COM and no country specific domain. Here what i am planning to do. I would change the setting in Google webmasters central to change the target country to USA. And then i will do on page seo to match keywords related to India. Is there anyother suggestions? please let me know.
Search Behavior | | Dexx220 -
Can I use Google Analytics to find out actual times of visits during the day??
Hi, I'm a newbie at all this - I hope someone can help me. We're thinking of running time-specific offers to try and convert as many of our customer site visits as possible e.g. 15% discount if you call between, say, 2 and 5pm. It would be really helpful to me to find out what times of day people are visiting our site. I can't seem to find a way to do this on Google Analytics. Can anyone help? Thanks so much Sue
Search Behavior | | 3Amigos0