Page Speed, SEO, and SERP, Is there a Relationship?

[gatormark]

Some of you say that page speed does not matter in SEO, but I've done some testing over the past 2 months and have found that it does, or at least rankings seem to be related to page speed. I've been focusing on page speed enhancements and using Google’s Pagespeed Insights and Core Web Vitals to measure my progress. My Core Web Vitals have improved significantly; going from 721 “Good URLs” to 10,137 “Good URLs.”

On May 1, I recorded the ranking of 16 keywords. Here are the results as of July 18.

Every keyword that was ranked on May 1 has improved in ranking! Of the 8 keywords that were not ranked (NR), 5 of them are now ranked.

May 1 ranking – July 18 ranking
Keyword 1, NR - 33
Keyword 2, NR - NR
Keyword 3, NR- NR
Keyword 4, NR - NR
Keyword 5, NR – 46
Keyword 6, 9 - 5
Keyword 7, 9 - 6
Keyword 8, 11 - 9
Keyword 9, NR - 24
Keyword 10, 26 - 16
Keyword 11, 5 - 4
Keyword 12, NR - 26
Keyword 13, 6 - 4
Keyword 14, 2 - 1
Keyword 15, 14 - 11
Keyword 16, NR - 15

[Wilburforce]

I think you must be careful not to conflate effects, as page speed cannot have been the only variable in play over two-and-a-half months, and - the statistician's mantra - correlation does not prove causality.

I am not saying that page speed is unimportant or irrelevant, and given two pages that might rank identically on all other factors, I would expect the faster page to rank higher. However, I would not expect speed to be the most significant factor, and this can be easily demonstrated by the fact that my own page - scoring 100 on Google's Page Speed Insights test - is currently ranking at #4 for a key term, while the #1 spot is occupied by a page scoring 45.

My point, I suppose, is that there is no harm in having pages that score well on Page Speed Insights (or load fast, which is not always the same thing), but other factors should take priority.

[sanjana mishra]

Page Speed plays a major role in ranking the website but there are some other things also in SEO that helps you to make your website rank higher in Google and other search engine platforms. So I think apart from page speed load time we must take care of other things too.

[gatormark]

@Wilburforce @sanjana mishra

there are some other things also in SEO that helps you to make your website rank higher in Google and other search engine platforms.

This is clearly the case. My point is simply that pagespeed does seem to play a role. However, it is clearly not the most important variable. I have pages ahead of me that score a 4 on Google's pagespeed test.

[RedBar]

Page Speed plays a major role in ranking the website

If that were true then many sites should not be ranking so well.

Speed does play a part in the algo however nowehere near as significantly as G would try and convince you it does. Their "emphasis" on speed over the years has more been a psychological one to get site owners to speed-up their sites especially for mobile use and to a big extent it has worked.

Since the early 90s I have always constructed pages with speed in mind and have never been able to comprehend those sites with massive indiex pages running into MBs, unfortunately some of these do still exist.

[JesterMagic]

I agree with RedBar. Google has been pushing speed but it makes little difference at this point in regards to ranking. AMP was introduced in part for speed but look at all the bloat that comes with most AMP pages these days. All those ads, ad popups, videos, etc... on AMP pages and a lot of the top pages in the SERPS from the major media companies will slow the fastest page down.

Rankings have been diluted by so many variables that concentrating on any single variable will not do you much good (unless it is backlinks).

[JorgeV]

Hello,

It also depends what you are doing, to achieve faster sites.

For example, if you are modifying your pages (html/css/js), as well as your images (compression, format, etc...), this is "stimulating" Google Bot to visit more, and eventually index more pages.

Google likes "fresh" content, but reworking the page HTML, layout, etc... also send a signal that Google "might" value.

Show that your site is alive (maintained) , is a good signal (among others).

[JesterMagic]

Yeah I see that happening as well JorgeV. If your change affects a large enough part of your site, in 3-7 days Google bot will be visiting your site at a much greater frequency. I usually notice it on layout changes but it has happened before for example when I reorganized my main menu items (which is found on all pages) and when I switched all my article images to be lazy loaded.