Update: As of July 9, 2018, The Speed Update has officially rolled out to all users. Google recently revealed a significant update to its mobile ranking system. Although speed has always played a role in organic rankings and Google Ads Quality Score, this change puts a greater emphasis on it. Page speed will become a crucial ranking element for mobile searches starting in July. What this means is that if you’re running ads for potential customers on mobile devices—or if you have any kind of organic search presence—you’ll want to pay close attention. Now, if that isn’t you, I understand your thoughts. I’m a B2B advertiser. I use large bid adjustments to filter out mobile traffic. This won’t affect me… Hold on there, partner. Back in 2016, mobile web browsing officially passed desktop traffic by volume. You’re passing up a massive number of potential customers if you aren’t already advertising on and improving your website for mobile devices (even if you market B2B software and mobile clicks don’t often result in trials, demos, or anything else, you should still advertise on mobile; create a mobile-friendly offer, lower your bids on mobile devices, and start testing). Trust us on this—as a B2B company ourselves, we’ve seen our mobile traffic exceed 35% of total site visits in recent months. And that is why we are here today. We’ll go over what you need to do with your SEO and PPC strategies to make sure this Google update doesn’t hurt your company. In this post, we’ll cover:

• What the Google “Speed Update” is
• Why Page Speed matters
• How this update will impact SEO and PPC, respectively
• Which tools you can use to determine your page speed (for free) Let’s get started.

What Is the Google “Speed Update”?

“Hold on,” you’re thinking. “Hasn’t page speed always been factored into Google’s ranking algorithm? What are you trying to pull here, nexus-security?” Firstly: whoa, there’s no need for that. Secondly: while it’s true that page speed has been a ranking factor since 2009, this has never been the case for mobile, at least not officially. As per the blog post Google published last week: “Although speed has been used in ranking for some time, that signal was focused on desktop searches…Starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.”

Let’s say you have some useful, pertinent material that is slowed down by a lot of cat GIFs. How much this update will affect you depends on your industry and how quickly the other websites you compete with are. According to Google, a query’s purpose is still a “very strong signal,” and a slow page may still appear highly in search results if its content is relevant. In comparison to rivals in the SERPs, the Speed Update will have the biggest negative effects on pages that offer users the slowest experience. So, does that mean that if your content is excellent and relevant, you shouldn’t be concerned about page speed? Absolutely not! Let’s look at why.

Is My Site Going to Be Penalized?

Are you curious if your website will suffer as a result? Fortunately, there are numerous tools available to help you evaluate your page speed so you can identify areas for improvement. For determining the specific areas where you can enhance your mobile page load times, Google advises using its own tool, TestMySite. A word of caution: the tool evaluates your site using a 3G connection; while this is a typical speed worldwide, we discover that the majority of our users connect at 4G speeds, therefore we optimize for that. There are also a ton of free page speed tests available that you can use to get a more comprehensive view of your site’s performance—our favorite being GTMetrix. You can use these tools to test any website because they don’t need administrator access. You can determine whether your website is especially susceptible to a decline in rankings by comparing it to rivals.

How to Adjust Your Mobile SEO Strategy for Google’s Speed Update

Google generously announced the Speed Update six months before it was scheduled to go live. Don’t be the person who logs into Analytics one hot July morning and exclaims, “Damn it. I got destroyed.” Summer is approaching, but there is still time. Here are some things you can do to prepare.

Make the Switch to AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)

What exactly is an Accelerated Mobile Page? An AMP is a change to your website’s source code that directs visitors from your standard HTML page to a simplified version of it—your hosted AMP page.

To put it another way: because AMPs are so uncommon, they load incredibly quickly. In Google’s initial testing, AMPs cut down load time between 15% and 85%. Here’s a pretty comprehensive post (and video) from Moz explaining what AMPs are and how to implement them on your site. It’s crucial to remember that you don’t *need* AMP to design incredibly fast mobile experiences, and you give up some design flexibility—but it might be worth a shot if you’re seeking for a reasonably simple approach to shorten your page load time!

Think about intent

Users of search engines phrase mobile searches differently than they do desktop searches. On the one hand, mobile searches use fewer words. True, as we’ve grown closer to our gadgets, queries have generally become more conversational; nevertheless, the need for speed and simplicity still drives mobile queries. You’re at a movie right now. Your fingertips are covered in popcorn butter. The phrase “How does Daniel Day-Lewis care for his mustache” quickly transforms into “Daniel Day mustache.” Therefore, if you manage SEO at IMDb and your website appears third in the search results for “Daniel Day mustache,” you should make sure that page loads very quickly.

Then there is, of course, local search. One Google Mobile Moments Study found that 40% of mobile searches have local intent. That’s a significant amount. Let’s assume you operate the best Neapolitan pizza joint in the city and regularly receive traffic from searches like “pizza near me.” Your homepage will suffer greatly from the Page Speed Update if it is slowed down by interstitials and uncompressed food photos.

Leverage Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Do it.

Is there a quick method to find out which of your mobile pages have usability and speed problems? Without a doubt! Using Search Console is an excellent approach to monitor the usability of your website. You may use the “Smartphone” tab under “Crawl Errors” to find any crawl problems that might be affecting your mobile pages; “Fetch on Google” lets you see how crawlers view your site and make necessary adjustments; and the “Mobile Usability” report pinpoints the precise pages that have mobile usability issues and describes the issues. As for page speed, your go-to tool will be PageSpeed Insights. Simply enter the URL of Daniel Day-Lewis’ actor page, and presto:

Disclaimer: this is not the actual page. Don’t worry, IMDb. Get an assessment of how effectively your page is optimized, a breakdown of any perceived issues, and practical advice on how to make improvements.

How Will Google’s Speed Update Impact Your Google Ads Account?

As we previously stated, and it bears repeating: According to Google, the Speed Update “will only impact pages that deliver the slowest experience to consumers and will only affect a limited percentage of searches.” However, we believe that Google is downplaying the significance of page speed as both an organic ranking component and a Quality Score factor. “Who cares about site speed, my ads just send people to landing pages anyway.” Well, my friend, you really should.

You see, landing page experience accounts for a sizable amount of the Quality Score algorithm. You know, that elegant little formula that determines how much you must spend each click to display an ad on the Search Network? In order to guarantee that prospects are sent to websites that provide what they are looking for, Google does not mess around. You will either a) pay a premium or b) be unable to display an ad at all if your website doesn’t load swiftly and present valuable content (in addition to achieving your actual business objectives). According to Google Ads (previously Google AdWords) documentation, there are five methods to make beneficial changes to your site’s landing page experience.

• Compelling, relevant content – Ensure that potential customers are understanding your message. The keywords you are bidding on should be prominently displayed on your landing page, and the offer there should be in line with the user’s intent (for instance, a low-intent keyword should lead to a download or low-stakes phone call, not a product demo).
• Be trustworthy – Provide social proof and awards (below your CTA and form fill/product) to demonstrate your company’s expertise. Explain your services and offer in detail.
• Make navigation simple – Make sure that visitors can easily navigate your page. Avoid using popups, and keep your CTA/form/product information visible. This is especially crucial for mobile landing pages, where screen space is at a premium.
• Decrease load time – Use AMP pages or make sure, by whatever means, that your landing pages load swiftly across all devices and browsers.
• Make your website faster – Similarly, test your website’s Page Speed to make sure everything appears good to Google.

Those final two (or three, actually) all relate to load time in some manner, implying that Google’s Speed Update may have an impact on them. Here’s how to examine your account’s landing page experience at the keyword level if you don’t want to spend more for clicks in the middle of July.

Checking your landing page experience in Google Ads

First, log into your Google Ads account and select the “Keywords” option on the left-hand sidebar.

You’ll then need to locate the status column and mouse over the visible text for each keyword. Following that, you’ll see a pop-up window that resembles this:

The final piece of data, titled “landing page experience,” is all you need to be concerned with in this case. If it reads ‘Average’ or ‘Above Average,’ you’re good to go. Refer to the list of contributing factors above if it says “Below Average”; if you have keywords in place and aren’t just posting nonsense, your problem is most likely page speed.

If that was a little complicated (or you’re already a nexus-security client), you can examine your landing page experience right away by navigating to the “Manage” tab in the nexus-security Advisor (shown above).

In Conclusion

Wow, we just threw a lot of information at you. If you use Google Ads, be sure to monitor and adjust for landing page speed and load time, not just relevance. From an SEO standpoint, consider switching to AMP, give intent some serious thought, and take use of Search Console and PageSpeed Insights’ capabilities.