Even though experts offering SEO services in Dubai constantly reminds about the importance of site speed, many web owners still believe the website’s appealing interface and ease of use are enough to rank high in search engines, because according to them these features are obviously what visitors would be expecting. They are right for the most part. However, the point to note here is that the visitors should firstly be there to experience the website’s interface. 

If the site takes too long to load, a good majority of the visitors would just leave and look for other similar websites that can load faster. So essentially, most visitors won’t be seeing the website’s appealing interface and ease of use simply because the site takes too long to load. This is why Google and every reputed SEO consultant, Dubai recommend working on the website speed for the highest search engine ranking scores. 

Here’s a small overview. 

The first experience

Suppose you put in a lot of effort to optimize your website – including relevant content, making the navigation easier, attractive interfaces, fewer clicks, great structure etc. All of these were added to give visitors a great first experience so they’d visit again. On the contrary, the first experience would be when the visitors wait while the site loads so they can access all that content. 

Site speed is an even more important factor on mobile. Google’s research a few years ago found that the average mobile website takes about 15 seconds to load. But today’s average mobile user expects the site to load in 3-4 seconds before they consider leaving to find a similar and faster loading site.  

Reasons to improve site speed

In a nutshell, improving site speed gives a brand happy search engines and happier customers. 

• Website speed is certainly a ranking factor.
  
• It’s easier for search engine crawler’s to crawl faster websites. 
  
• Faster websites can deliver higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates. 
  
• Site speed is part of a great user experience. 
  

Google recently launched their ‘Speed Update’ which again made it official that site speed is a ranking factor for mobile searches. The update doesn’t reward already fast sites getting faster but is still recommended to be as fast as possible. However, the slowest sites would be penalized.

Crawlers or Googlebot (if we are considering Google search engine) should find it quite easy to crawl a website, regardless of how big it is. That’s why a website should be well-structured and clean with all redirects in order. Even the hosting server is a factor that influences a website’s loading speed. Speed-optimized websites would be easy for bots to crawl, and the search engine in turn would give them a higher score. 

Conclusion

SEO is one of the most demanded services when it comes to online marketing in UAE. It takes a lot of effort and planning, and doesn’t deliver results overnight. There are many factors that need to be taken into account starting from a website’s foundation itself. 

Every user is different, and could be using different type of internet connections and devices to access websites and their content. It’s important to understand this user base to plan and execute an effective SEO strategy designed to make websites faster and better. There are recommendations and guidelines to follow, though some of them should be taken with a grain of salt.