Preparing for Google’s Mobile Speed Update

As most internet marketing pros will know, page speed has been an SEO ranking factor for a while now when it comes to desktop searches. Recently, however, Google has announced that they will be including page speed as a ranking factor for mobile searches as well, a new update that promises to shake up the search engine optimization world.

This change, expected to be instituted in July, will only affect a small number of pages – but you still need to be prepared. Let’s go over some basics to ensure you’re ready for Google’s “Speed Update,” as they’re terming it.

Pages Affected

This Google update will focus primarily on the pages that deliver extremely slow user experiences through mobile searches – therefore, it’s not expected to widely affect most pages in this realm. The update applies the same exact standard to all pages no matter what technology they used to build the page.

In addition, know that the goal of this update is to create a strong signal. With this in mind, it’s possible for a slow mobile page to still rank well if the content is both relevant and high-quality.

Tools to Help Evaluation

As developers look for ways to react to this change once it institutes, Google is suggesting that they consider various user experience metrics to determine how users are interacting with the page. Google hasn’t created a single tool to track this new speed factor and how it affects your pages, but despite that, there are a few good tools out there that can help:

• Lighthouse: This is a tool that falls within the Chrome Developer Tools. It’s meant to audit website quality, including factors like performance, accessibility and others.
• Chrome User Experience Report: This is a public database where user experience metrics for Chrome users are inputted regularly.
• PageSpeed Insights: This is a tool that uses the Chrome UX Report to gauge a given mobile page’s performance. It also suggest various optimization methods for areas that are lacking.

For more on ensuring your business is ready for Google’s mobile speed ranking factor changes, or to learn about any of our other SEO services, speak to the pros at SEO Werkz today.