If Site Speed Doesn’t Matter, What Factors Affect Search Visibility in Google?
Google recently announced that site speed has no effect on search visibility. This has no effect on any notable changes with traffic for a site or rankings within Google. Site speed will only affect how well your users can navigate through the site and the time they spend on each page if they do not click off of your site. The only metric that would be affected by this is the bounce rate from your site due to the slowness.
What Role Does Site Speed Play If Not for Search Visibility?
Since site speed has no effect, it is not considered a factor unlike content and backlinks. With that in mind, this can affect other areas of your business, like your clickthrough rate and bounce rate. The clickthrough rate is the percentage of the users who actually click through to your site, while the bounce rate is the percentage of users who leave your site without interacting with it at all. So, the speed itself does not necessarily aid in ranking, but it helps in the retention of users on your site.
How Can I Improve My Site Search Visibility?
There are several ways to improve your site’s visibility, which include:
- Using long-tail keywords (these are keywords that have two or more descriptive words for searching, which can allow you to rank a bit higher without aiming to rank for highly competitive keywords in the search)
- Optimizing your site for mobile use
- Auditing and rewriting your title tags, meta descriptions, and content for each page
- Building more backlinks from relevant sites
- Optimizing your pages for users to stay on your site for longer periods of time
The above are just a handful of ways to communicate the quality of your site to Google. Overall, it’s important to always be auditing your site and evaluating ways to improve performance.
How Does Search Visibility Affect My Business?
Search visibility means ranking as high as possible on Google. This often means outranking your competitors and connecting you to more potential customers, theoretically leading to additional sales. With the added visibility, your business will be able to better target your audience and find qualified leads.
Building your search visibility also helps build your overall brand awareness, showing you have a level of authority within your industry. This aids in your site traffic and conversions as well. Investing in your site now builds a long-term asset and aids in generating more growth for your business as a whole.
Learn More About Improving Your Visibility on Google
Search engine visibility on Google involves optimizing your website to be seen and recognized by Google for your target keywords. By working towards increasing your overall domain authority, you’re making your website more readily available to potential leads. For more information on how you may be able to rank higher on Google, contact us for a consultation today.