To be competitive in your search, you must check and optimize the speed of your desktop and mobile pages, as well as prepare real-time personalization data.
Google has long been hiding the main points of its search ranking algorithms, but we know for sure that page speed is a factor. Google states on its resource “How Search Works” that “we are developing algorithms to promote more useful pages compared to less convenient, all other things being equal. These algorithms analyze signals that indicate whether all our users can view the result, for example ... whether the page load time is optimal for users with a slow Internet connection. "
Consumers with good connection speeds are also impatient for slow sites, especially mobile ones. When Google last analyzed the load time for a mobile landing page in 2018, the average time taken to fully load one page was reduced by seven seconds. However, it took about 15 seconds, which is too slow. Given that 53% of mobile site visitors leave the page, which takes more than three seconds to load, marketers still have a long way to go.
When customers look for products and services like yours, it is very important that you appear in a prominent place with accurate, attractive and quickly available information.
1. Site and speed
Regardless of whether they are shopping online or trying to find information about one of your local stores, today's constantly connected consumers require trouble-free and quick purchases. In fact, 79% of shoppers who are dissatisfied with the performance of the site say that they rarely make purchases from the same site again.
Marketers and web designers should take care not to clutter the pages with heavy elements that delay download time and frustrate users. In a recent study, Google found that “as the page load time increases from one second to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor’s failure increases by 123%. In the same way, since the number of elements — text, headings, images — on a page increases from 400 to 6000, the probability of conversion falls by 95%. ”
The impact of a slow site and page speed can be devastating.
Here are Google recommendations for mobile sites:
• Mobile pages that display content for users should load in 3 seconds or less.
• Average time to the first byte is less than 1.3 seconds.
• To display the entire mobile web page, less than 50 content items are required.
• Total page weight less than 500 KB
2. AMP
According to an e-marketer study, in 2019, an average American will spend more time working with his mobile devices than watching television.
In October 2015, Google launched AMP. The Google Accelerated Mobile Pages initiative is an affordable, open source environment for creating fast-loading pages for mobile users. On February 24, 2016, Google officially included AMP listings in its mobile search results, and today you will find AMP on more than 25 million domains.
AMP reduces the weight of HTML pages with AMP code and markup, which provides a separate version of the page optimized for fast delivery to mobile devices. Google places the AMP files in its own content delivery network (CDN), so the content behaves as if it is loaded from the browser's cache, and not from a remote server.
AMP is not for everyone, and it may not be necessary for your site. However, it is worth checking it out. Page speed for retailers can be just as important as price.
3. Content that meets your needs quickly
This is not about how fast your content loads, but how quickly your content meets the needs of the consumer. In a word, we are talking about relevance.
Consulting firm CX Walker predicts that by 2020 the quality of customer service will surpass other indicators and will be the key brand difference. That is, not the price and the product itself, but the service!
The overwhelming majority of marketers agree that in order to achieve success, they must improve their understanding of the “path” of users through several channels and various devices. Search engine analysis should be an integral part of your content creation process. Get information about the problems, needs, desires and causes of your customers. The right partner can help here, because the amount of data we have to deal with grows exponentially with each new interaction.
It is also important to create the right content formats. The search is becoming more visual. Google reflects this consumer desire in mobile search results, which displays far more thumbnail images than before. Recently, Google announced that it makes visual content more useful for searching, “helping people better find information visually and making it easier to find what people are looking for in Google Images”.
Marketers need to help the search engine understand what each image is and how it relates to a specific query, by optimizing tags, data, tags and image descriptors. Choose images with special attention to quality, download speed, visibility, context, authenticity, and overall visual appeal.
4. Data is ready for activation
The fight against data is real. All reports, ideas, trends and analysis in the world are useless if you cannot quickly activate your data and use it to achieve business results.
Brands are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to provide automated data analysis, communications, including e-mail and chat bots, research and information aggregation, operational analysis and efficiency analysis.
It is also important to understand how Google uses AI.
Google’s number one result still gets 28 percent of clicks (two and three positions get 13 percent and 9 percent, respectively).
As a marketer, you must contribute to show Google how your content relates to different types of requests. Structured data allows you to describe your content in a language that Google understands. Make sure that you mark all the text, videos, and images, and follow the guidelines for optimizing image search to ensure maximum visibility.
5. Real-time optimization
SEO specialists can use up to six tools and spend on average up to four hours a day for research, reporting and analysis. You simply cannot compete at this level with machines with artificial intelligence and heightened consumer expectations.
Just a few years ago, automated data analysis was a revolutionary solution. Today, you need to be able to not only receive information from your data, but also then use this information for real-time optimization. Keyword research, forecasting opportunities, recommendations and content optimization, website monitoring, website traffic reports, monitoring of search volume and ranking, and much more can all benefit from more efficient automation that provides data-based optimization.
Put it all together: fuel your need for speed
Today it is impossible to compete in the search without speeding up your site, analysis and optimization. You cannot do everything manually, and you cannot do it alone. Turn to the professionals!
