The performance of a website has always been a vital part of creating a smooth consumer experience for those visiting the site. However, these days website performance has become even more important because it can have a direct impact on the ranking of your site, which in turn can have an impact on visitor numbers.
For those who want to ensure their websites rank highly, it is important to ensure that website performance is at optimum levels. This means having a website that loads quickly, that is properly optimised in terms of speed and content, and provides a user-friendly experience for customers.
What can affect the ranking of your website?
There are many different factors that can affect the ranking of your website, many of which relate to the quality and performance. Search engines have started putting greater focus on the quality and performance of websites when it comes to ranking, so if your website is not of a good quality and is slow and frustrating to use, getting a good ranking will prove difficult.
This in turn can result in fewer people actually coming across your site, which means lower numbers of visitors, lower conversion levels, and an overall negative effect on business. Here are some of the areas of your website quality and performance that can affect website rankings:
- The quality of your content: The quality of your content can play a part in your website rankings, as search engines now want website that offer content that is valuable to website visitors and provides authoritative information. Gone are the days of stuffing a site full of useless information that focuses purely on keywords in order to increase rankings.
- Optimisation: Your website needs to be optimised both in terms of the content and the speed, as this can have a big impact on performance and therefore on the ranking of the site on search engines.
- The speed of your site: A variety of factors can affect the speed at which your site loads. It is well worth using professionals that offer Website Load Testing services to help you to identify issues with the speed of your website. Website load testing makes it easier to optimise performance, which in turn can make it easier to increase your search engine rankings.
- Ease of use: It is important for consumers to be able to access a site that not only loads quickly but is also user-friendly in terms of design. This is also something that will keep your website visitors coming back and help to increase conversion rates.
Given the variety of factors that can have a big impact on your website rankings, ensuring that your site performs as smoothly as possible has become increasingly vital if you want to benefit from higher search engine rankings.