Test Your Site Speed and Upgrade Your Server/Hosting
We’d like to help business owners by letting them know about simple marketing tasks they can easily complete in less than 5 minutes. This month, we will show you how to check your site speed and improve it if necessary. Let’s get started!
1. Open Chrome, visit your website, and click on the 3 dots in the top right corner.
2. Hover over “More Tools” and click “Developer Tools”.
3. Make sure “Lighthouse” is selected at the top of the screen and click “Analyze page load”
4. If you see “Reduce initial server response time” under the “Opportunities” section of the results, then you may want to consider upgrading your server.
5. Log into your hosting account and see what upgrades are available. You can contact your hosting company directly if you would like to find out exactly what upgrade will get the speed results you’re looking for. It’s typically not a significant price increase and it’s almost always worth the investment to improve your lead generation.
Importance of Site Speed
Your site speed significantly affects both the user experience and your site’s Google rankings. Statistics show that the probability of a person leaving your website to find a competitor increases dramatically literally every second. In fact, some studies show that 90% of users stop waiting for a site to load if it takes longer than 3 seconds. Just a couple of seconds can be the difference between you or your competitor getting the lead.
Regarding your rankings, Google pays close attention to your site’s “bounce rate”. This is how long it takes a user to “bounce” back to the search results to find someone else. Google’s primary goal is to provide the best results for their search customers. If they see your site isn’t keeping visitors on it for very long, they will find a competitor’s site that does.
Of course, site speed and bounce rate are just two of hundreds of factors Google considers when deciding where a website should rank. If you’re interested in learning how Larchwood Marketing can help you rank higher, give us a call or schedule a call with us through one of the buttons below.
