What is the latest Google SEO update?

New update of the Google algorithm: Speed ​​Update

At the beginning of the year, Google announced that it had until this month of July for websites to update the performance of their pages with mobile searches, and that's how it was, July has arrived and the new update is here:

What is Google Speed ​​Update?

After the last update, Mobile First Index , on July 9 Google revealed a new significant change in its algorithm, focused on the performance of websites: Google Speed ​​Update. Its objective? Provide a better search experience to users through mobile devices .

Until now, the loading speed only affected the search results in desktop versions, but, from now on, it will be a classification factor in the search results made through the mobile.

Why is loading speed so important?

Time is money and users have less and less patience to wait for a web page to load, so it is not surprising that if in a couple of seconds the web page is not available, it is more likely that we will leave her and let's visit another one.

If every thousandth of a second is fundamental, it is more so in mobile devices. According to a Google study , the probability of rebound in a web increases drastically with every second of more included in the loading time.

That is, the important thing is to know what factors or elements are slowing the web and remedy them as soon as possible. If your website has a slow loading speed, as we have said, you can increase the bounce rate; but in addition, it can reduce the time of permanence of the visit of the user and, of course, reduce the conversion rate.

Does Google Speed ​​Update influence indexing?

The update of Google Speed ​​Update (on positioning) and the update of Mobile First Index (on indexing) are two different things.

Updating the upload speed does not affect how the Google search engine indexes content on mobile or desktop devices , but only affects the ranking of search results on websites through devices. mobile

The loading speed will be another factor to take into account within the set of measures of the search results focused on improving the user experience.

Who will be penalized for the new update?

This new update, which Google calls Speed ​​Update or speed update, will penalize all those web pages that offer experiences of load times excessively slow for users, lowering them to lower positions in the search results, covering a small percentage of consultations.

And what about the AMP pages?

If you use AMP in your pages, you probably do not have to worry about loading times , since most of the time the loading time of the AMP pages is much less than the canonical page.

But do not settle, AMP is not a solution; At first sight, it could be an advantage for those websites that have implemented AMP and could encourage websites that do not have it to implement it in their pages, but this does not mean that the AMP pages will have priority automatically, since

Google is not based on the technology used to build, a page, but on the speed of loading it.

That is, the important thing is the loading time: if the users that arrive through a search land on an AMP page, the speed of the AMP page will be taken into account.

However, if a page built with AMP provides a slow user experience, it could have a lower ranking in the search results. Some free tools to know the performance of your website Google is not providing any tool that directly indicates if a page is affected by this new classification factor, but some of these resources may be used to evaluate the performance of the pages:

• Chrome User Experience Report: this is a public data set that provides information about key user experience metrics for popular destinations on the web. This data is based on the actual experience of Chrome users.
• Lighthouse: is an automated tool that is part of the tools for developers of Chrome (Developer Tools) and with which you can measure the quality (performance, accessibility ...) of web pages.
• PageSpeed ​​Insights: tool that is responsible for evaluating how a page performs in the Chrome UX report and provides suggestions on how to improve the performance of it.

Gtmetrix, Pingdom Tool, Webpage test ... How can I optimize my website's loading times and increase Google PageSpeed?

Here are some tips that can help you optimize the performance of your websiteand thus improve the Google PageSpeed:

• Avoids loops redirection .
• Excessive loading time hinders a good user experience .
• More speed yes, but prioritizing the quality of the content.
• Run away from cheap hostings .
• Compress all the images .
• Improve the source code .
• Take advantage of browser caching for static resources.
• Applies GZIP or Deflate compression .

Without going into detail we can say that the main objectives of these good practices are:

• Minimize the number of HTTP requests that occur.
• Reduce the size of the responses of these HTTP requests.
• Optimize the rendering of the pages in the browser.

You can find more detailed information on these tips in this other article .

Meet two new free tools from Google that will be of great help. Google took advantage of its participation in the Mobile World Congress that was held in Barcelona in February to present Mobile Speed ​​Scorecard and Impact Calculator, new tools that allow us to measure the loading speed of our website on mobile devices and estimate the impact it has. in our business.

However, your database is still limited to large websites, so you may enter your domain and the tools will not give you results. It can be useful, in any case, to search the websites of the referents of your sector. This is of great importance considering, as you already know, that Google already indexes websites in mobile version first .

The Speed ​​Scorecard

This tool, Speed ​​Scorecard or mobile speed scorecard, has an extensive database thanks to the information obtained from the Chrome User Experience Report and allows you to compare the speed of websites against those of the competition on mobile devices. get to show the speed of thousands of websites according to connection type belonging to 12 countries of the world.

How to use Speed ​​Scorecard in 3 steps:

1. Enter your domain in the indicated field.
2. Select the country and type of connection.
3. Enter the domains of other sites in your category or sector to discover how your brand is positioned.

Impac Calculator

This calculator is able to make a rough estimate of the potential impact on revenue that could be generated by improving the loading speed of your website for mobile devices.

With just a few facts, you'll see improvements in conversions and revenue based on faster or slower mobile upload speeds.

That is, using their controls we can see how a small change in the load of the page can increase or decrease revenues significantly.

We only have to provide 3 data to the Impact Calculator tool:

1. Average monthly visitors
2. Average income per order.
3. Average conversion percentage.

Conclusions

If you got here, it's because you're worried about the loading speed of your website or you want to improve it.

If so, do not waste any more time and start to analyze and put into practice everything we have told you.

Remember that if you do not have a well optimized loading time on your mobile website, there will always be a greater risk of losing many visitors and potential customers along the way ... even for just a few seconds of difference with your competition.

And, what really matters is that this is already working. If you notice that your mobile traffic changes (for better or for worse), it is very likely related to this update of the Google algorithm. So do not fall asleep! and make sure your website goes like a shot.