Google has published a clear indicator that website load time is important to rank towards to the top of search results.

"Six months after announcing it, Google rolled out the mobile page speed update, making page speed a ranking factor for mobile results." 
Mobile Speed Update  —  July 9, 2018

Since Google knows that consumers are continuing to access the internet in increasing numbers on smartphones, the speed of page loads appear to be a major indicator of how to rank well in search results. 

Did you know?

An extra 1 second delay in page load leads to an 11% decrease in page views. 
(Cloudinary)

This Is Where Google Analytics Can Help!

One of the over looked features in Google Analytics is under the Behavior Menu Tab. This is where you find Site Speed/Page Timings and Speed Suggestions. 

Page Timings

Within Page Timings you will see individual pages and the time they take to load relative to the other pages on your site.

In the example below, you will see a bar graph. The pages listed in red (right of the center line) are loading slower than the rest of the website. In fact, Line 9 takes more than four times as long to load as the average page.

Speed Suggestions

If you click on the next menu item - Speed Suggestions - you will see that Google has 7 suggestions for improving the load time for this page.

The most common reason for a slow loading page?

Large images that need to be compressed. Good news to those with a Thrive ySite... our CMS automatically resizes images for you! That means not just the dimensions of the image, but the file size too. No more accidentally putting 2MB+ size images on your website again!

You can not only select from the pre-determined sizes: large, medium, small, or thumbnail but you can also use the image handles in the editor to resize to the exact unique size you want.

Next week: How Google Audits your business information 
& how it can effect SEO results.