Google just announced a new page experience signal and it all boils down to user experience. One of the biggest factors involved is how fast your website loads. Don’t think that all you need is backlinks to rank on Google. Speed affects your website rankings.
The most widely-accepted belief is that the more backlinks you have, the higher your rankings will be. That’s why a lot of SEO gurus constantly mention this as their recommended tactic—build links. Yet, despite the plethora of strategies on link building, why aren’t most websites ranking on page one? There’s got to be something else, right?
Yes, content quality. That’s what the experts all say. So, if a website isn’t ranking, they blame the quality of the content. It’s easy to dismiss this because high- or low-quality is really subjective. That’s why a lot of business owners are constantly trying to revise their content because they’ve been told that (1) if they build links and (2) they have high-quality content, their website will start ranking on Google.
But they are missing one crucial part—user experience. What most SEOs don’t tell you is that Google’s #1 mission is focused on bringing accurate information to its users. What this means is if you have terrible website speed—which users all hate—you have little chances of ranking.
Did you know the average page load speeds of the websites in the top 10 results is 1.65 seconds? If yours is nowhere near that, don’t worry about the quality of your content and don’t start link-building activities. Focus on improving your site speed and user experience first. Once you get to an acceptable level, that’s when you do all those other things.
Infographic Source: https://themarketingintrovert.com/seo/website-rankings/