If you are slow to load your customers are quick to leave

z188In our instant gratification world, speed is everything. It seems unnecessary to even mention speed but the fact remains that far too many small business websites are so slow to load that they are losing traffic, damaging their SEO marketing efforts, and losing sales.

  •  If your website is too slow to load, your customers will not, for the most part, wait for it. Not only will you lose sales, but your SEO marketing strategies will surely be impacted. Most experts agree that a page should load within one second for potential customers to feel that their navigation is unhindered. For SEO marketing purposes Google classifies a slow load when page loading time approaches a second and a half or more.
  • Recent research has reveled that over half of all people who venture to a website will leave if they feel it is loading too slowly even if they really wanted to visit. About half the users in a recent survey stated that they want a page to load in under two seconds and will head out to visit your competitors if that load speed does not happen. Despite your SEO marketing efforts, another recent survey suggests that for every second of loading time over one second, a business can lose between 7%-10% of sales they would have had if they were loading faster.
  • Causes for slow loading website are many. They can be caused by your site, and all pages, not being properly optimized. Another reason is a plethora of ads or images that are slow to load. Embedded videos, unwieldy code problems and browser and server challenges can also create problems in loading. SEO marketing is tough enough without having to worry about loading time.
  • Slow loading will definitely affect your SEO marketing strategy. Google has long ago announced that page loading speed is a critical factor in search ranking. You want to be visible to the search engines. You want to come up on the first page of every SERP. One of the factors affecting it is speed. It will even affect a SEO marketing campaign using PPC like Google AdWords. The slower your site loads, the higher cost per click you just may end up paying.

So, in the end, speed really matters to a website today. Having a professional SEO marketing firm handle your search ranking eff