Google’s Speed Update is Live

Now that Google’s Speed Update is live, it’s important to make sure your website is being served to users at its optimum speed.

What Is Google’s Speed Update?

It was first announced back in January the algorithm would be going live in July 2018. The time between the announcement and the launch has provided website owners with time to put the necessary changes in place, to improve their site.

This is great if you knew about this update although, many did not and are still unfamiliar with the update.

The initial announcement of the Speed Update algorithm was made in a blog post on the official Google Webmaster Blog.

Today we’re announcing that starting in July 2018, pagespeed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.

Google has recognised site speed as a ranking signal for desktops since 2009. So this is nothing new. However, with mobile device usage overtaking desktop usage for the first time in 2016, it is important that your site loads quickly to cater for this.

The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page.

The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow loading page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.

What Does It Mean For Your Business?

A technically healthy and speedy website lays the foundations for the future work you carry out with your online marketing strategy.

The benefits of improving your website speed include:

• Better customer satisfaction
• Increase in sales and conversions
• Improved rankings in search engine results

At Kanuka Digital, we carry out regular reviews of our clients’ website to make sure they are performing to the best that they can.

Can Google’s Speed Update affect my PPC Campaigns?

In short, yes. Google gives each of your adverts in Adwords a Quality Score. This score is based on many factors including not only the keyword and advert relevance but also the landing page user experience. Page speed is part of that landing page experience.

You could potentially see a Quality Score drop for your adverts if the appropriate action isn’t taken. This, in turn, could mean that Google may decide to not display your adverts at all.

What can we do to help?

If you are wondering how your website is performing from a speed perspective you can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool or if you would like a deeper health check of your website we provide a comprehensive Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) audit that highlights all the good things as well as any areas that can be improved upon.