A few years ago, Google announced a new Mobile Page Speed test element update. This also marks the official announcement that page speed is a ranking signal for searches performed on mobile devices.
In addition, Google also presented a change in their page speed measurement method after a series of different updates to emphasize the importance of mobile user experience.
Mobile page speed test: A separate SEO component
The first significant change since the beginning of 2018 is that now, Google measures page speed and considers it a separate element from Technical SEO (activities to improve the efficiency of crawling data and indexing of the website)ز
You can easily see this change by testing your website through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
Back in the day, pasting a URL into PageSpeed Insights would give you a score based on clear technical criteria, such as:
- Redirects are set up;
- Whether the image is compressed or not (compression);
- Are redundant components or elements removed (minification)?
The tool will then provide you with basic page parameters and a list of optimization suggestions you can follow to improve your Score.
But now, PageSpeed Insights scores two separate items:
- The “Optimization” section is a new name for the old 100-point scaled factors.
- “Speed” is a new factor, and it can be confusing – especially if your website has a “good” optimization score but at the same time has a high-speed score the level at “slow” (slow).
(Image source: Internet)
Speed scores will be assessed at three levels “fast” (fast), “average” (medium), or “slow” (slow). Usually, websites with low optimization scores have low-speed scores, but that’s not always the case.
This is a matter of concern because you can easily optimize your Score in the “optimization” section by studying the recommendations offered and focusing on technical SEO. Still, it won’t be easy to impact page speed scores directly.
The fact is, if your website is rated as slow, often the cause will lie in many reasons that you have no control over.✅See also: How to Write a Blog Post that Ranks in Google
Mobile page speed test: Why your website needs optimization?
Before the Page Speed test update was implemented, the PowerSuite SEO team tried to find out if there would be any effect on the rankings of pages for popular search terms. To test, they analyzed 1 million URLs in the top 30 for 33,500 queries.
(Image source: Internet)
The results show that both before and after the update, there is little or no correlation between rankings and FCP/DCL metrics. However, there is a strong correlation (0.97) between the average optimization scores of pages and their rankings on the SERPs.
This study was conducted over 3 months, and during this time, not only has that correlation remained unchanged, but there has actually been a significant increase in the overall quality of the sites occupied—positions in the top 30 of the results page.
The average optimization score of positions 1-30 for mobile searches has increased to 0.83 points, which shows that optimization activities related to technical SEO are becoming more critical.
✅See also: Best Online Course for SEO: Rank #1 in SERPs
Mobile page speed test: How to Improve Page Speed?
Obviously, you can’t find a way to ensure that all visitors are using LTE networks or the latest smartphone models. You can use CrUX to understand where your visitors are coming from and the average experience they have on your website.
If you spot a trend (for example, the majority of visitors are from Ho Chi Minh, and they mainly use iPhone 7), then you can try to optimize specifically for that audience.
To access CrUX:
- Sign in to Google Cloud;
- Create a new CrUX project;
- Go to the BigQuery console and click ‘Compose Query’;
- Perform data retrieval problems.
You can then feed the resulting data into visualization programs like Tableau, Google Data Studio, or Excel to see how your website’s performance is represented.
You can use CrUX in various ways, but it’s a good idea to add it to your SEO practice. It’s an excellent tool for uncovering essential metrics to entity users, such as type, What devices and connections they use, or how your website’s performance compares to your competitors.
You can also use these 20+ Best Website Speed Test Tools For FREE to improve page speed optimization.
How to Improve Page Speed: More tactics to improve page speed optimization
If you know there’s a problem with your Speed Score and Optimization Score, try getting your site speed below 200ms and fixing the technical SEO issues first. These categories you can easily control are all factors that directly affect the ranking of the website.
If you’ve optimized your site speed to less than 200ms, but you’re still getting a “medium” or “slow” Speed Score, then you can study the data in CrUX to see which user segment is having problems and why they experience such slow speeds.
That’s why you need to follow these tips:
- Choose a good hosting for your website.
- Compress all the images on your site.
- Enable browser caching.
- Minify CSS, HTML and JavaScript.
- Reduce your redirects
- Cache your web pages.
These are only a few tips to improve page speed optimization.
✅See also: 20+ Best Website Speed Test Tools for 2023 For FREE!
Conclusion about Mobile page speed test
The Mobile Speed Update is one of a long list of mobile-focused initiatives that Google has rolled out over the years.
From the advent of AMP to mobile-first indexing to the introduction of new tools like Impact Calculator and Mobile Speed Scorecard, Google has shown they’ve always been user-centric, and there’s no sign that they’ll ever change this direction.
Adjust your SEO strategy by integrating more data related to the actual user experience, making their on-site experience – especially on your mobile site – fast and easy. as smooth as possible. This will improve the overall UX and ensure that you stay one step ahead when Google introduces a new change designed to enhance search quality for mobile users.✅See also: IMAGE SEO: How To Optimize Images For SEO and Rank Higher?
