Website performance has never been more important than it is today. Not only is high performance crucial for creating great user experiences, but it also plays a critical part in a site owner’s biggest battle: search engine findability.

The idea that a high-performance site is a must-have for a positive user experience is nothing new. The link between site performance and visitors performing the actions site owners want them to is well-known. Site visitors expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less; the expectations can be even higher on mobile (where page-load generally takes longer).

These same site visitors begin abandoning slow sites at 3 seconds. Reducing the download and render time of a site is critical for high conversion rates and user retention.

A less obvious, but even more important, aspect of site performance is the way it affects a site’s SEO. Google has made it very clear that it has a speed-obsession for every product on the web, and Google considers fast load speed as a positive ranking factor.

Build Your Digital Brand With User-Generated Content

Digital content is the fuel that drives the customer experience. User-generated content (UGC), in particular, occupies a powerful place in the content marketing toolkit because it has a significant influence on brand reputation and user conversions.

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For websites to rank high on search-engine results pages, web pages must be optimized enough to load fast. In 2020, Google introduced Core Web Vitals as an essential ranking factor. Core Web Vitals include aspects of user experience, like loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.

So why is this a site owner’s biggest battle? Because we live in the world of cheap, easy to use generative AI. SEO was difficult before, but in a world where anyone can churn out mountains of “truthy” content, it’s even harder.

Legions of site owners are perfectly happy to crank out tons of “grey goo” content that drives eyeballs to the ads on their sites, and these site owners are far more nimble than the typical authoritative site owner. Enterprise site owners spend years building web presences that feature complex requirements and exacting brand standards — and they have many stakeholders to answer to. The nefarious site owners you’re likely competing against don’t have to deal with all that, so they can work quickly and use the latest and greatest tech available. That latest and greatest tech also happens to yield high-performance websites.

If you’re the owner of a site that provides authoritative content on a subject, like your own business, you need to be on a level playing field, and you need your site to perform as well, if not better, than the nefarious zone flooders.

The Bottom Line

In the ever-shifting digital landscape, at least one thing is constant: Your site has to work quickly and smoothly, on all devices. Generative AI and Google’s dynamic algorithms are only the latest developments to up the ante; site performance is only going to get more important from here.

If you want to make sure you’re doing all you can to attract and retain customers, schedule a call with TA Digital’s SEO and Technology specialists to optimize your site’s performance and, most importantly, make sure you’re adopting the same cutting-edge tools your competition is.

Kishore K. Machineni, Technical Architect, and Srinivas Reddy Vangala, Sr. Technical Lead, contributed to this article.