Definition
The term page speed refers to the loading speed of a page on the internet and consists of three different time spans. First, it contains the server response time (= Wait Time To First Byte or Time To First Byte (TTFB)) as well as the time to download an HTML page (= Transfer Time). Furthermore, the duration of rendering the page in a browser also counts towards the total load time. Thus, the term page speed covers the complete time span from sending an HTTP request to a server to the complete display of a website in a browser.
Importance for user experience and search engine optimization (SEO)
Long loading times of a website lead to bad user experience and cause users to quickly leave a site again. Especially when surfing via mobile devices, it is essential that users can retrieve the desired content without delays. Page speed is even more important here because of the low transmission speed on mobile devices. If your website loads too long, whether on desktop or on smartphones, this leads to frustration for most users and they quickly leave your site, which leads to a higher bounce rate.
But page speed not only indirectly influences search engine optimization, but is also an important direct ranking factor for Google. In addition, Google crawls slow pages less frequently than fast pages. This is because slow pages require more crawl budget, which Google wants to use as efficiently as possible. If Google Bot visits your site less often, this can negatively impact indexing.
Page speed, therefore, is an important starting point for improving user experience and for search engine optimization for Google. In the next section, we explain how you can improve the page speed of your website.
Checking page speed with Google PageSpeed Insights
You can easily analyze the page speed of your site with Google PageSpeed Insights. This Google tool retrieves your website with both the mobile and desktop user agent and then provides a total score for loading speed. In addition, it provides concrete optimization tips for improving the Google PageSpeed score of your site.
Screenshot with an analysis result of Google PageSpeed Insights