Website Performance and Its Impact on Google Ranking

As the planet’s largest search engine, Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. We play by Google’s rules since we have no other choice. And there are some time-tested axioms that always hold true for Google SEO ranking: the importance of gaining Google’s trust, the age of a domain, and quality of content over quantity.

While Google rankings & SEO may seem a bit overwhelming to most people, it doesn’t have to be rocket science. In fact, there are some simple measures you can start doing today to improve your web performance metrics and hence, improve your Google Score.

1.Website Load Speed

Statistics show that customers tend to abandon a website that hasn’t loaded within 3 seconds. In fact, back in April 2010, Google started using page speed as a ranking factor, meaning that faster pages would earn higher SEO rankings than slow ones. So, the big question here becomes how are you improving your website load time to optimize your web performance and satisfy Google’s ranking algorithms?

2. Mobile Friendliness

3. Review Your Web Hosting 

For example, a shared hosting account often involves sharing server space with dozens of other companies where website speed is impacted by the number of people using the servers. If this is the case, then it may be time to consider a dedicated plan where you have sole access to the server.

Again, anything that can be done to mitigate against unwanted downtime is crucial for improving the overall performance of your online business. The best step you can take to avoiding downtime issues is to ensure your web host offers a continual uptime guarantee. The most common type is 99.9% uptime, though some providers are even moving to a 100% guarantee.

4. Carefully Placed Header Tags 

Search engines also give higher preference to keywords inside of header tags. In fact, the key to optimizing your SEO is to focus on the H1 tag. Neil Patel offers a lengthy article on the importance of a properly placed H1 tag on search optimization rankings. In one case, Patel mentions that he changed an H1 tag on one of his blogs and the results were almost immediate:

“Within three days, the page had 85% more organic traffic. Plus, it had gone from page 3 of the SERPs to page 1, position eight!”

5. Inbound & Outbound Links

Just as inbound links help to establish your site as a credible source of information, outbound links from your site to other authoritative websites also plays a factor in SEO. After drafting a study of monitored keywords over a period of 5 months, marketing firm Reboot came to the following conclusion:

“Outgoing relevant links to authoritative sites are considered in the algorithms and do have a positive impact on rankings.”

6. Image Optimization

Evidence shows that a well-placed image can increase conversion rates on a website. And the best way to signal the relevance of an image to a search engine is by relevant keywords.

The simple trick here is to add ‘alt’ and ‘title’ tags to the images, a technique recommended by Google publishing guidelines The ‘alt’ tag describes what’s on the image and the function of the image on the page, and is used by screen readers (browsers used by blind and visually impaired people) to tell them what is on the image.

7. Update Content Regularly

The simple and straightforward idea here is that Google likes quality content over quantity. As one very well-ranked blogger well puts it, “I don’t focus on pushing out tons of content; I simply focus on pushing on very good content as often as possible.

8. Watch Broken Links!