We have known for some time now that page speed affects rankings on Google. However, now Google announced that ranking speed will be a factor for its upcoming mobile-first index. Currently searches from mobile phones still pulls content from the primary Google index. Going forward, all search results will pull from the new mobile-first index. Searches on mobile phones are increasing and it won’t be long before the vast majority are from mobile devices. Here are some ways to increase the speed of your page loads:
AMP
One method is to active AMP for your website. AMP is a project by Google to reduce the size and complexity of web pages and serve them directly. It is not hard to implement AMP and some CMS’s have plugins which take care of the process.
HTTP2
HTTP2 is one of the latest technologies that is meant to improve speeds and latency. It is built around HTTPS, which means if you don’t use HTTPS yet, you will need to. The HTTP protocol was meant for a much smaller network footprint and HTTP2 is a timely upgrade.
PHP7
Most websites and back-ends that use PHP still run much older versions like PHP3 and PHP5. PHP7 is a massive improvement in terms of speed, stability and even security. Users of WordPress will see the biggest speed difference.
The most important thing is to check and constantly evaluate page speeds. This way any change can be addressed before it affects ranking and traffic levels.
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