What is page speed and why is it important for technical SEO? 

Page speed is the amount of time it takes to load a single web page. It’s a very important factor in technical SEO, as it affects user experience and search engine rankings. It can also influence your site’s bounce rate and time on the page. 

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Users don’t expect a website to open and show all the content in just a few seconds. It’s normal for a website to open with a blank page and then load some elements (such as a block of text or an image). As new content loads, the user can interact with it. 

A page that’s taking too long to load is frustrating for users, and they will often leave before the site loads completely. It also negatively impacts your site’s search engine ranking. 

Google, like most search engines, has started to place greater emphasis on page speed as a ranking factor. Its Core Web Vitals initiative aims to improve the overall experience of the web, and as a result, Google has taken page speed into account as part of its ranking algorithms. 

The main reason for this is that a page that’s taking too long to load will cause users to lose patience, and they’ll be less likely to return to your site in the future. According to a study by Walmart, a 0.1-second increase in page load speed can result in 8% more conversions. 

There are several ways to improve your page speed. One way is to minify your files. This makes them smaller, reducing the number of requests your pages make to the server. Another is to compress images. Finally, you can use a caching service that can save frequently needed resources on the browser so they don’t have to be requested each time the page loads. 

You can check your site’s HTTP requests with Google Chrome Developer Tools. In this panel, click on the “Network” tab and then look for the number of requests made to each internal resource (such as a script file, CSS file, or image sprite). 

Reducing the number of HTTP requests helps your page load faster. You can do this by consolidating script files and CSS files, using image sprites where possible, and caching frequently needed resources on the browser. 

If you’re a WordPress user, try a plugin like WP Rocket that can help you minify your files. It can also reduce the number of external CSS and JavaScript files you need to include on your page, which will decrease your HTTP requests as well. 

The speed of your page will vary based on the type of device that is accessing it, as well as its network connection. For example, mobile devices may be more sluggish than desktops. 

For this reason, you should test your site’s loading speed on multiple devices to get a more accurate view of how it performs. It’s especially important to do this when trying to improve your page speed, as it will help you identify and fix issues that are causing your site to slow down on different types of devices.