Having so many technological advancements at our fingertips can make it difficult to be patient while waiting for information. We know we can learn any little fact in the blink of an eye with just a few taps on a screen. We can even speak questions out loud to an AI assistant.
That’s why site speed plays a significant role in your healthcare brand’s search engine optimization (SEO) performance. In fact, site speed and SEO are more closely linked than you might think.
When people click on a site, they expect everything on that site to load as fast as possible. If they’re left for a beat too long while a webpage loads, they can click off in search of a quicker source.
Research shows that people will click off a page that doesn’t load in three seconds or less. Just three seconds. Thus, a few seconds’ decrease in site speed can have a huge effect on your SEO.
When you understand how your website’s speed affects your SEO, you’ll be motivated to focus on improving the technical aspects of your site. So, let’s dive into five ways your site’s speed affects your SEO.
5 ways that your site speed affects SEO performance
The average load speed of a site is 2.5 seconds on a desktop and 8.6 seconds on a mobile device. You can run a technical audit on your brand’s website to see what your page loading time is. Then you can strategize about how to speed it up, such as by optimizing your images.
Before you even run an audit, though, there are things you need to know about how site speed affects SEO. Here are five ways your website speed can have an effect on SEO:
It factors into ranking
The main goal of search engine optimization is to have your site rank as high as possible on search engine results pages (SERPs) for keywords related to the type of healthcare you offer. Many factors affect how search engines rank websites, and one important factor is your site speed.
The faster your site speed, the more likely you are to rank on relevant SERPs. Of course, the opposite is also true: A slow site speed can lead to low rankings.
It affects crawling efficiency
Search engines use bots called crawlers to index your site’s pages. The process of indexing looks basically like this:
- A search engine crawler visits your webpage.
- It downloads the page’s images, videos and text.
- The crawler analyzes the downloaded content to figure out its meaning.
- The crawler adds the meaning and content to the search engine’s index.
It can take longer for crawlers to go through this process when your website is slow. This can limit the amount of page content or the number of pages that get crawled. As a result, the search engine will not have as good an idea of what your site’s pages are about.
This makes it much less likely that the search engine will rank your site’s pages highly in SERPs. And that means your site will be much less visible to the people who are searching for your healthcare services.
If your site is fast, these problems don’t appear, and your site is more likely to rank high in SERPs.
It impacts credibility
When a website is slow and doesn’t work well, potential patients might think that the healthcare brand behind it is not trustworthy or not as good as others.
A lack of credibility can lead to a poor brand reputation, which can have a negative impact on many aspects of your online presence, including your organic traffic and how you’re seen in the eyes of the search engine algorithm.
It affects bounce rate
A standard metric used to track digital marketing efforts is the bounce rate, or how many people click off your website after viewing just one page.
If a page takes too long to load, chances are that the potential patient won’t stick around to explore another. A high bounce rate can affect user experience (UX), which is an important SEO contributing factor. If the algorithm sees that people aren’t engaging much with your site, it isn’t likely to recommend you for other potential patients.
It impacts conversions
It’s one thing to have someone click on your site on a SERP; it’s another to have them actually become a patient or provide you with their information for future marketing opportunities.
If a user isn’t willing to wait for your site to load, the chances of them converting into a patient are low. The algorithms take notice of how often people engage with your site and complete conversions. If a slow page loading time interferes with those metrics, it can reflect poorly on your SEO.
How can BURG+CO. help boost your site speed and SEO?
At BURG+CO., we consider all the factors that can impact your SEO performance. We also ensure that your strategy addresses each one of these elements. For a slow site, we’ll work with you and your web developer to dig into the reasons the site is running so slowly.
Then, we’ll ensure that any updates you make to your technical SEO are supported by effective on-page SEO tactics. We’ll also create search engine and user optimized (SEUO) content and post it on your site. This type of content is specifically crafted to appeal to both search engine algorithms and potential patients alike.
Want to see how boosting your website speed can positively affect your SEO? BURG+CO. can help
Increasing traffic to your website plays a role in increasing conversions and bringing in new patients. However, it’s difficult to attract visitors to your site when you don’t know what to do. Fortunately, this is what we specialize in at BURG+CO.
Our team has years of experience in helping healthcare brands improve their digital presence to attract new patients and retain existing ones. If you’re looking to perform better in SERPs and attract more potential patients to your site, we’re ready to talk to you to see how we can help.
Contact our team today for more information about digital marketing services or to schedule a free consultation.
