Following on from our last post about responsive design for mobile websites, Google has since announced a change to the way that mobile websites will be ranked. Designed to ensure only the best and most up to date mobile websites reach the top of the search rankings, this new algorithm change is related to speed. Here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design, and web marketing, experts. As a result, we have produced this guide to the speed update for mobile search rankings.
What is the Speed Update?
On Wednesday the 17th of January, Google announced the latest update. The speed update. This will not take effect until July of 2018, which gives businesses and web developers a chance to get their mobile websites up to code. Similarly to the mobile first update, Google is asking web developers to go back and take another look at their mobile website. Is it really good enough? But in this case, it is specifically about speed.
We’ve all been there. Searched for something on our mobile or tablet and selected the result we thought was the best fit, only to then be hit by the white screen of death. Has your phone crashed? Or has your data ran out? You start to check off the problems one by one. Switch off the screen, switch it back on. And still no change. You tap the back button, probably more than once. And phew, you’re back at the search results and can choose another option. It’s all happened in less than 10 seconds, and you’ll forget about it by the time you’ve found the information you were looking for. But still, it’s not a good website experience.
No matter how much patience we have in the real world, when it comes to the digital world, we want our answers immediately. We’re all impatient. And mobile websites that make us wait (or think our phone has crashed) just don’t meet our expectations. So as of July this year, those pages will be demoted in the search engine rankings.
This update isn’t really surprising though, all things considered. It’s not the first time that page speed has been something of a talking point at Google, with page speed for desktop sites being a ranking factor for some time now. It just has not been taken into consideration in the same way for mobile sites before now.
In addition, changes that are mobile focused are essential to the development of Google itself. This is because the majority of Google’s users are using mobile devices to search. And Google needs to continue to provide the best possible user experience.
How will this update affect businesses?
Simply put, if your mobile website is slow to load, you could see a drop in position in the search engine rankings. However, Google has said specifically that:
“The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.”
But if you know your pages load pretty slowly, why not optimize them today, to secure your position in the future?
Optimizing mobile websites for speed
Responsive web design might be the best thing to ever happen to mobile websites (in my opinion) and responsive mobile websites generally load faster anyway. But you can take the optimization this offers even further. Here are our tips for optimizing mobile websites for speed:
Optimize images, manually if necessary. This isn’t just about what scale your image should appear. It’s about how much longer a larger image takes to load, even if it is automatically resized for a smaller screen. Essentially, in a lot of cases, the website is storing and loading a really large image, which it then resizes before displaying. So just cut out the middle man. Compress your images with web-ready compression and then upload them in the web-ready format. You don’t need to worry about loss of clarity, because many of the applications are so good at providing this compression, that it can be impossible to tell the difference. But you will notice a huge difference in site loading speed.
Keep your design simple. Mobile websites with custom fonts, and complicated designs are not going to load fast enough. And when they do, they will be more difficult for users to navigate, because of the additional information on the screen. Mobile design needs to be simple and clean, without visual clutter. Think about the size of a mobile screen. There simply isnt the space for website designs that aren’t straight-forward.
Minify your code. Take out all the code that isn’t necessary and streamline your code. You can get rid of comments, white space characters, and new line characters without any impact on your page at all. Apart from reducing the load time.
In summary
Google is releasing a speed update that will see mobile websites ranked partially by their speed to load. This means that web developers and businesses need to make sure their mobile websites are loading quickly and efficiently, or they risk their number one spot. Responsive design, optimized images and minified code can each help you to reduce your mobile website loading time. For professional support, why not contact Pumpkin Web Design Manchester today, Manchester’s leading web design and web marketing experts.