Medical SEO: Why Site Speed Matters

06 Feb Medical SEO: Why Site Speed Matters

When it comes to medical SEO, site speed can be the subtle difference between a positive user experience and a negative one. After all, how many times have you exited out of a website solely because it took too long to load? And, on that note, how much would you hate it if that same situation happened to your business’ homepage?

Site speed is a big deal, especially because it’s part of the algorithm Google uses to rank websites on search rankings. While you should never sacrifice relevance and quality content for site speed, it’s still a factor that can mark the difference between page 2 results — and page 1.

Here, we’ll discuss a few reasons why site speed matters, and how you can improve your website’s performance — thereby improving your medical SEO efforts. Read on!

Consider the customer in every part of your approach to medical SEO.

This includes site speed in a big way. After all, site speed is one of those things you don’t notice until you visit a super slow page, and sit waiting for a page to load. With today’s Internet speeds, slow websites should be things of the past — and that means that if your website is taking too long to load, you need to consider your medical SEO plan and do something about it.

After all, when users visit your homepage, they’re very likely looking for necessary information, whether it’s an easily accessible address or additional details about a service. In order to leave your visitors with a positive first impression, this information should be readily available to them without any huge obstacles; if they are not committed to visiting your website, it is very easy to simply click over to a competitor’s page.

Use your resources to remedy the problem.

Fortunately, Google provides a handy resource to troubleshoot your medical SEO page-loading issues. PageSpeed, straight from Google’s developers, is a family of tools intended to improve your website’s performance. Analyze your site and you will receive a series of best practice recommendations, such as optimizing images or prioritizing visible content.

Other tools to consider include Google Chrome, which can directly analyze your website within the browser’s DevTools; open-source Javascript libraries; Google DNS; SPDY, a low-latency content transport protocol; and WebP, which reportedly provides 30% better image compression.

It’s important to remember that, due to the nature of Google’s AdWords and algorithms, it may take days or weeks for your medical SEO website improvements to take effect in search rankings. Despite this delay, however, site speed is a necessary avenue to pursue in order to create the best possible experience for your visitors. Slow load speeds can lead to a decrease in visitor engagement and retention, which can have a ripple effect into other aspects of your medical SEO efforts; marketing campaigns, for instance, will not reach the widest possible audience if people are not given the opportunity to fully engage with your content.

What’s the biggest takeaway from all this?

Google uses a variety of factors to impact your website’s search engine ranking, which means that your medical SEO plan needs to approach your website from a variety of areas. Site speed is one of them. While the emphasis of your page should always be on providing excellent content, the user experience plays a large role in page relevance — one of the most important elements of the all-important search algorithm.

Long story short: If there’s a problem, it’s time to fix things. For all matters related to medical SEO, healthcare marketing, and practice building, speak with the professionals at HealthCare Marketing Group. For more information, contact us today!