18/03/2020
Slow websites will be flagged by Google in the near future
Google was always rather strict when it comes to ranking websites, and over the years they introduced a number of new algorithms that were specially designed to filter out all kinds of spam and malicious behaviour from the site owners.
In the beginning, this was mostly aimed at spam in terms of the on-page SEO, and the KW strategies applied in order to improve the standings of the website.
During the years of development, they went further and defined a number of ranking signals that were to define standings of any website out there. It was not only about the basic SEO anymore, and it included things such as originality of the content, backlinks, and many more.
In the last few years, the focal point was on maintaining the strong SEO practices, but it also went further and made the user experience as one of the most important things for getting high ranking. The newest addition to Google ranking signals is actually showing that this is going to be the major trend in the future as well.
Slow websites will be punished
Load speeds were somewhat important in ranking in the previous period, but it has been not nearly as important a thing as it is going to be in the future.
With the newest addition of ranking signals, the slow websites will be placed lower, and on top of that, they will be clearly labelled by Google as well. They intend to do it via Chrome, which is the browser of choice for a huge majority of the users, and that will help many users who get disgruntled over these issues identify the websites that have this issue on a regular basis. It is further expected that all of those websites will experience a huge drop in visits once the new system is in place.
The key to this new trend is the development of the websites. Most such slow-loading sites don’t really have any connectivity issues, but instead the problem is in the code. They will have to either fix that part or suffer the consequences that will be quite significant and not pleasant at all.
Luckily, the problem is relatively easy to fix. All you need to do is redevelop your website in order to make it faster, and you will have to use developers who know what they are doing. It will come with some additional expenses, but this is nothing compared to the potential losses due to being flagged as a slow website.