SiteSpect Synopsis: Mobile Speed Means More Than SEO

Starting this summer, mobile page speed will be a factor in SEO rankings. This comes as no surprise to marketers who have been optimizing for search engines on desktop sites for years. Even still, mobile pages still lag, and brands lose customers to slow load times. This week, we’ll look at the conversation around site speed and mobile conversions.

“Here is Why Mobile Web Speed is Critical for your Marketing ROI,” Martech Advisor

Contributor Itail Elizur sites research that suggests that consumers expect mobile sites to load in three to five seconds, but the average load time for mobile pages is 22 seconds. Elizur goes on to explain how with each second a page takes to load, bounces can triple. “For example, if your page load time goes from one second to three, the probability of that visitor bouncing goes up by 32%. Add just two more seconds, and that probability shoots up another 90%. Those bounces mean lost conversions, and lost sales.”

The Takeaway: Slow mobile sites have a demonstrable and substantial impact on conversion rates and ROI.

“How Will Mobile Page Speed Impact Your Google Rankings and UX?” Search Engine Journal

Search Engine Journal outlines five ways to optimize mobile sites for search engines this year. Ultimately, they all come down to making sure the user experience your site provides is as good as it can be, thus improving customer satisfaction rates and also increasing SEO. The five factors are: Provide a great content experience, make your site super fast, consider using an amp, check your mobile-friendliness, and have a strong call to action. SEJ writes that taking these actions “should help improve your user experience, increase conversions, keep users on your site longer, and drive more organic traffic.”

The Takeaway: Google’s inclusion of mobile site speed into SEO isn’t just another hoop to jump, site speed has a huge impact on user experience, conversions, and revenue.

“Google Releases Mobile Scorecard & Impact Calculator Tools to Illustrate Importance of Mobile Page Speed,” Search Engine Lane

Writer Ginny Marvin reports on Google’s two new releases: a mobile scorecard and impact calculator. These products drive home the importance of site speed to SEO, conversion, and revenue, and also aid marketers and site owners in understanding how their sites stack up. The impact calculator in particular estimates the dollar value of revenue lost or gained by mobile site speed.

The Takeaway: In your efforts to improve mobile site speed and SEO, take advantage of Google’s tools for calculating the revenue impact of your mobile site.

A Little Point of View

Google’s upcoming move to consider mobile page speed in SEO ranking won’t take any marketers by surprise, but it will necessitate some reprioritizing. Generally, optimization tools slow down mobile speed because they depend on java tags and aren’t equipped for SPA testing. So, while your trying to improve your user experience you’re drastically hurting your SEO. Now more than ever it’s crucial to implement SiteSpect’s tag-free testing solution, which actually speeds up your mobile site and decreases flicker and latency. Industry writers agree that mobile speed will have to be a big priority for marketers this year and into the future, this means that smart testing and quicker implementation also must come to the forefront.

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