As an innovative digital marketing agency in Birmingham UK, we like to make sure our clients have access to the latest developments in digital marketing thought-leadership and website technology. Our MD, Mike Raybone, is involved with a number of internet and digital marketing groups and attends regular meet-ups to be at the cutting edge of what’s current in the online marketing space.
Something that’s been consistently coming up lately is the impact site speed has on a website’s SEO success.
Modern websites are media rich. It’s common for images and video to occupy a greater percentage of the site architecture than when websites were first developed.
This means a greater pull on server resources. And more pull here can create slower loading websites.
Slower Websites Are Now Being Penalised By Google. The Result?
A dip in rankings…
We all know a dip in rankings equates to a dip in traffic. A dip in traffic can have a negative impact on sales, leads, exposure… not good for the growth of your business.
For some time Google has indicated that site speed is a signal used in its algorithm to rank pages. In essence, the slower the site, the lower the rank.
Why? There are two main reasons:
- Faster sites create happy users. It’s been shown that when a site performs slowly, people spend less time there. All of Google’s efforts to prioritise sites in the search engine results pages (SERPS) now are to do with factors that make for a happy user experience.
- For website owners, better site speed has financial benefits too in reducing operating costs.
Unless you’re of a snail persuasion, the chances are you want your website to load fast and therefore rank well, so that your digital marketing efforts aren’t going to waste?
That’s Certainly The Case For All Of Our Birmingham Digital Agency Clients
Over the last few months, we’ve been rolling out something new to their websites.
It’s called Site Speed. And, it’s helping us ensure our digital agency clients from Birmingham UK are ahead of the game when it comes to web loading times.
As part of our Site Speed package, we’re also including a FREE SSL certificate.
Secure sites are something else that Google likes.
A recent look into this by MOZ, and cross-referenced by the team at Rank Ranger, showed that that as much as 50% of Google page 1 listings are now HTTPS.
Based on the trend for adoption of HTTPS, it’s even suggested by the guys at Search Engine Land that by the end of this year, as much as 70% of page 1 results will go to websites that have HTTPS secure encryption.
You can see why it’s so important for the success of your website’s SEO performance.
Here at our digital marketing agency in Birmingham UK, our clients’ sites shows how having a strong HTTPS secure encryption obviously makes them more secure. And it also makes for a better user experience – there are those ranking signals again.
HTTPS Will Future- Proof Our Birmingham Digital Agency Client Websites
Furthermore, by including SSL certification, we are helping to future-proof our clients’ websites for when HTTP2 is rolled out.
HTTP2 is essentially an update on the language that websites are built in.
HTTP has served the web well but is getting outdated. For some time, this has meant developers having to come up with workarounds to address issues. For instance, speed and file loading times.
The aims of this major revision are to do away with the need for these hacks with a view to improve website experience from both the front and back ends.
That means for your website user, better site speed and therefore a better user experience.
And we know that impacts on rankings…
Behind the scenes, it means servers will use fewer resources so developers won’t need to implement the previously mentioned hacks.
What Have Been The Results Of Us Introducing Site Speed To Our Clients?
We are delighted to report that of our clients from our digital agencies in Birmingham – who have signed up to our Site Speed package – all have seen improvements to their website load times.
Is improving the speed of your website to give a great user experience something you are interested in?
Why not find out more about how we help SME’s sell more online, more profitably using our 21 years of expertise in website design, digital marketing and social media? Talk to us today on 0870 062 8760.
We can even help certain businesses in the Midlands access Grant funding to help*.
*Subject to status and grant rules.
