Why Page Speed Matters for Google Ads

Imagine for a moment your friend just told you about an amazing supplement that boosts productivity because it helps you stay alert and focused. You can’t wait to get your hands on it because you’ve been struggling for a few weeks with your concentration, which has caused your productivity to plummet. The problem is that you don’t remember the name of the supplement. You type into Google’s search bar, “supplement for productivity.” You still don’t recognize any of the names, but decide to click on the first result to see if it could be the one. The landing page for that brand’s supplement loads excruciatingly slowly. You can’t stand waiting, so you hit the back button and decide to click on the second result. Bam. The landing page loads nearly instantly and you decide to go ahead with the purchase. What you may not have realized is that the first two links you clicked were Google ads. The first click made the advertiser lose money, while the second one made that advertiser money. Missed Opportunities With Slow Landing Pages This is an example of how landing page speed is incredibly important to the success of your Google ads. Google Ads continues to be an effective way to promote products and services. Billions of searches are performed each day on Google, which means there are billions of opportunities to sell your products and services. Every click someone makes on one of your Google ads is an opportunity for you to make or lose money. Don’t let your landing page speed be the reason you lose money. How to Know if Your Landing Page Speed Is a Problem There are many tools available that you can use to test the speed of your landing page. One is GTMetrix. This tool not only gives you a letter grade for your page, but it will then tell you how to fix it. For example, when I entered in a page URL, I discovered I could improve the site speed by doing the following: Add Expires headers Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) Make fewer HTTP requests Reduce DNS lookups Use cookie-free domains These fixes are to load your page faster on desktop devices. But what about mobile devices? Mobile Site Speed Is Just as Important As the title states, mobile site speed matters for Google Ads. The reason is many people are more likely to use a mobile device rather than a desktop to search Google. You may be surprised to know that mobile device searches surpassed desktop searches 3 years ago, and the number of searches performed on smartphones and tablets are just increasing. Chances are, many people clicking on your Google Ads are on a mobile device. That brings me to the next tool to use - PageSpeed Insights. PageSpeed Insights by Google provides information on the speed of your page for mobile and desktop as well as what needs to be fixed to boost the speed. Some of the recommendations from this tool are to: Reduce server response time Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content Leverage browser caching Optimize images Plus, this tool shows how to fix these issues. All you have to do is click on the “Show how to fix” hyperlink. Conclusion People don’t want to wait for a website page to load. If they do have to wait, they will likely go back to Google’s search results and click on the next one. This costs you money because with Google ads you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. Plus, over time Google will lower your quality score due to slow loading pages, which means you'll have to pay more and more per click to keep advertising. To make sure your landing page loads at an adequate speed, use GTMetrix and PageSpeed Insights. Then follow the instructions to fix the issues slowing down your pages. Want more Google AdWords tips to improve your performance? Click here to grab a copy of our Ultimate Google AdWords Checklist.

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Why Page Speed Matters for Google Ads

Phil Frost

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