Speed will be more of a factor than it ever was when Google’s Core Web Vitals update goes live in May this year. Webpages loading as fast as they can have an advantage in search.
Martin Splitt (Google’s Developer’s Relations team) recently spoke on upcoming changes to Google’s ranking factors in response to a question about blocking certain countries to speed up sites, one of many techniques SEOs use to increase page load speed. Splitt made it clear that even if a site has blocked users from certain countries, they could still use a VPN to access it. This would then actually hurt a site’s Core Web Vitals as using a VPN limits a users’ bandwidth and reduces the speed of their internet connection.
Ways To Increase Website Page Loading Speed
If you want to try to increase the speed of your website without going overboard to the point that you might cause some damage try the following instead:
- Use reduced image count and size specifications since big images can slow a site’s loading time down considerably.
- Object caching.
- Content delivery networks (Cloudfare) can speed up load times a great deal.
The Best Way To Check Your Page Load Speed For Google Ranking Improvements?
The answer: Google PageSpeed Insights