Google has recently rolled out a new policy in which site owners or managers who utilize Google Search Console will be notified if they have pages that are taking an excessive time to load.
If you have such pages, Google’s notification will inform you that:
- Your site performance is significantly below average
- Speed is a ranking factor for mobile and desktop search results, meaning a slow site can significantly hurt your rankings
- You should take action as soon as possible to correct the slow pages, giving you suggestions on how to do so
The notice may also outline some ways that you could go about speeding up your site. Whether these are addressed in your Search Console note or not, some of the major ways that you can reduce the load time of your pages include:
- Reducing the size of your images
- Adding plugins that streamline aspects of your site
- Making your landing page redirects cacheable
- Using a content delivery network
- Reducing DNS lookups
- Presenting resources from a consistent URL
- Avoiding 404/410 errors
If you receive one of Google Search Console’s notices, we greatly encourage you and your team to investigate potential causes quickly. You don’t want all your hard work to be wasted due to slow load times and penalized rankings.
