{"id":142095,"date":"2020-09-25T15:24:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T15:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=142095"},"modified":"2020-09-25T15:24:37","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T15:24:37","slug":"speed-and-performance-of-web-dev-seo-and-marketing-agencies-websites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/09\/25\/speed-and-performance-of-web-dev-seo-and-marketing-agencies-websites\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed and performance of Web dev, SEO, and marketing agencies websites"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"well\">\n<h3>30-second summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The research shows most agencies failed when it comes to the performance of their website.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Search engine ranking is a multi-factor game, and performance, while it matters for many reasons, is just one piece in this puzzle.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nebojsa Radakovic shares insights.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ever since Google <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2018\/01\/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">announced<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that page speed would be a ranking factor in its mobile-first index in 2018, the need for speed became one of the most important aspects of web dev trait. A lot of businesses jumped onto the speed train.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sure enough, one year later, Google <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/webmasters.googleblog.com\/2019\/04\/user-experience-improvements-with-page.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">reported<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that sites are faster, and abandonment rates are down since making page speed a ranking factor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With performance being one of the top-selling points of a modern-day web dev architecture <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bejamas.io\/blog\/jamstack\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jamstack<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that we are so into, it was only natural to take a deep dive into the industries that tackle website performance and see how we stand against our peers.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>TL;DR: Key findings<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don\u2019t have the time to read through the research? Here are the key findings:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">27% of websites from our 20K sample still run on HTTP<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">65.7% of the websites are built with WordPress<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only 2.7% of websites have <\/span>good <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">performance scores<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2.9% of websites provide good user experience to their users, ie Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) occurs within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>What data was I interested in, and why?<\/h2>\n<p>Lighthouse performance metrics<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. There are a couple of popular speed testing tools, but most people use Lighthouse. While it may not be perfect because it provides a mix of both lab and field data about a page, I\u2019ve used <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/speed\/docs\/insights\/v5\/about?hl=en-US\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pagespeed Insights API<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> as described in James McNulty UpBuild post <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.upbuild.io\/blog\/automated-pagespeed-insights-update\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, although updated to show <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/web.dev\/vitals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">core web vitals<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>CMS. WordPress or not. <a href=\"https:\/\/w3techs.com\/technologies\/details\/cm-wordpress\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">37% of all websites<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> are powered by WordPress. Being the most popular web dev solution, it would be interesting to see and compare different solutions in terms of speed and performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Where did I get my URLs from?<\/h2>\n<p>Gathering URLs is a time-consuming work. But I managed to get 20k URLs (20397 URLs to be exact). I\u2019ve cross-referenced results I got from scraping the first-page organic results of a set of keywords (like SEO agency, web dev agency, etc.), results I got by using tools such as Phantombuster to scrap review websites, and results I got from hiring virtual assistants on Upwork and Fiver.<\/p>\n<p>There are a couple of issues I had to take care of first. Amazingly 27% of websites from my 20K sample still run on HTTP. That\u2019s not good at all. On top of that, I had a bunch of URLs coming up with <i>NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/cheapsslsecurity.com\/blog\/fix-err-cert-common-name-invalid\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">error message<\/a> in Chrome. Once those were taken care of, I ended up having results 13945 URLs instead of 20K.<\/p>\n<h2>The data<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142099\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/popular-cmss-1024x551.png\" alt=\"Popular CMS- Speed and performance research\" width=\"640\" height=\"344\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/popular-cmss-1024x551.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/popular-cmss-300x161.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/popular-cmss-768x413.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/popular-cmss.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Of course, the most popular CMS is WordPress, with 65.7% of websites from my sample using it. For 18.8%, I was not able to detect any CMS. 2.58% run on Squarespace, 1.6% are built with Drupal, 1.41% are on Wix, and so on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The results should not come as a surprise given that WordPress powers 37% of all the websites on the Internet or 63.6% of all the websites with known CMS.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Performance scores &#8211; <b>How scores are color-coded by Google<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The metrics scores and the perf score are colored according to these ranges:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">0 to 49 (<\/span><b>Red<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">): Poor<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">50 to 89 (<\/span><b>Orange<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">): Needs Improvement<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">90 to 100 (<\/span><b>Green<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">): Good<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">You can read more about it <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/web.dev\/performance-scoring\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As far as the performance scores for all websites are concerned, 77.1% of the <a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/04\/09\/seo-friendly-javascript-website-kit\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">websites<\/a> are in the poor range, which means there is a lot of room for improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-142097\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-all-url.png\" alt=\"URL performance - Speed and performance research\" width=\"1023\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-all-url.png 1023w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-all-url-300x188.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-all-url-768x480.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1023px) 100vw, 1023px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pretty much the same story when we check only WordPress websites, 83.9% are in the poor performance range.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142098\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-wordpress-1024x641.png\" alt=\"Performance WordPress - Speed and performance research\" width=\"640\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-wordpress-1024x641.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-wordpress-300x188.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-wordpress-768x480.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/performance-wordpress.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Core Web Vitals<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By now, you probably are well aware of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2020\/09\/16\/google-ranking-factors-2021-core-web-vitals-e-a-t-or-amp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Core Web Vitals<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Their importance is twofold:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google considers them essential in a webpage\u2019s overall user experience, and understanding them can help you improve the quality of experience you are delivering to your users,<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Google plans to make a page experience an official Google ranking factor with Core Web Vitals being an essential part of it.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The current set for Core Web Vitals focuses on three aspects of the user experience: loading (described with Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metric), interactivity (described with First Input Delay (FID) metric), and visual stability (described with Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric).<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For this research, numbers follow the performance scores. For example, check out the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-142096\" src=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Largest-Contentful-Paint-LCP-1024x620.png\" alt=\"Largest-Contentful-Paint-(LCP): Speed and performance analysis\" width=\"640\" height=\"388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Largest-Contentful-Paint-LCP-1024x620.png 1024w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Largest-Contentful-Paint-LCP-300x182.png 300w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Largest-Contentful-Paint-LCP-768x465.png 768w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Largest-Contentful-Paint-LCP-1536x930.png 1536w, https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Largest-Contentful-Paint-LCP.png 728w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Being that I\u2019ve tested only 20k URLs (actually 13945), let\u2019s not generalize conclusions. However, the general \u2018feel\u2019 is that the ones required to think of speed and performance failed the test.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Performance, while it matters for many reasons, is not and should not be the end goal. It depends not only on the tech used but also \u2018features\u2019 you\u2019ll have on a website, which pretty much depends on the industry\/theme your website is in. And balancing performance and functionality successfully depends on the value a feature brings to your business versus the reduction in speed that results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The thing is, whatever tech you use, you can end up with good scores (some easier than others). The real question is, how important are the scores for your client, their business, and their audience?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Nebojsa Radakovic is an SEO wiz with 20 years of experience. He is also an extreme sports enthusiast. He can be found on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CookieDuster_N\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@CookieDuster_N<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nebojsa Radakovic analyzed 20k agency websites for speed and performance and what I learned is not that good. A detailed report on what&#8217;s going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":142101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,5],"tags":[27952,703,37,27955,23258,737,22,1584,27954,27953,280,27],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-142095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics","category-seo","tag-core-web-vitals","tag-data-analytics","tag-google","tag-largest-contentful-paint-lcp","tag-performance-analysis","tag-research","tag-seo","tag-seo-performance","tag-website-performance","tag-website-seo","tag-website-speed","tag-wordpress"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Speed-and-performance-of-Web-dev-SEO-and-marketing-agencies-websites.png","category":"Analytics","timeago":"5y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142095"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=142095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}