I see so many SEOs always cite the page speed of a site when it comes to why a site may not rank that well. Truth is, from what I understand, the only way page speed impacts a site's rankings in Google is if the site is unbearably slow. If your site is a drop faster than the next, it won't rank a drop higher than the next. But if your site is incredibly slow, Google may demote the site.
So it is more of a penalty than a ranking boost, from what I understand.
In fact, John Mueller recently had me questioning if Google even used page speed as a ranking factor anymore. And as you may remember, your mobile page speed isn't counted, it is your desktop page speed if anything.
Yesterday, Gary Illyes from Google told a webmaster not to "worry about it too much," when it comes to page speed. He said on Twitter:
@seefleep I wouldn't worry about it too much. Make it as fast as you reasonably can.
— Gary Illyes (@methode) April 21, 2016
This site is pretty slow according to Google's PageSpeed tool:
But I am not going to do anything about it until we launch our new design. Just like I did a few weeks ago when I launched the new RustyBrick design which is super fast.
I really think SEOs spend too much time focusing on page speed. Yes, speeding up your site by a second of load time will have drastic positive impacts on conversions. But for a ranking factor, I would not go mad over it.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
