It is no longer a secret for any web professional that the loading speed of a web page is a determining factor in the user experience with a real impact on the commitment rate and conversion rates.
Over the past few months, this parameter has also become a subject that makes more and more noise in the SEO sphere.
One of the actions to be taken to optimize the performance of your site is its transition to HTTP/2.
What is HTTP?
HTTP means HyperText Transfer Protocol, this is a protocol that allows a machine to query a server. When you access a page, your device sends an HTTP request to the server, the server responds with the requested resources.
HTTP was created in 1997, it was HTTP/1.1.
Historically, Google has searched through the SPDY project (pronounced « Speedy ») to enrich and increase the capabilities of HTTP protocol with the aim of reducing the loading times of web pages. This project was integrated into the new HTTP/2 protocol launched in 2015.
HTTP/2, what benefits does it bring?
When you load a page, your browser sends a request to the server, it is done through the network.
Once this request is received by the server, a response is returned to the browser with the requested resource.
With HTTP/1, this ping-pong must be done for each resource, one after the other, and there are gaps such as:
- Response times, network latency
- This phenomenon is accentuated when pages are rich in resources (images, css, js)
- The mobinauts are sometimes disadvantaged by the limited coverage of networks.
One of the revolutions brought by HTTP/2 concerns multiplexing, i.e. several HTTP requests can be sent and responses can be received asynchronously via a single TCP connection. As a result, it solves many of the problems related to latency.
The HTTP/2, a ranking factor for a good SEO?
He's not directly. However, speed and user experience remain factors for SEO and moving your site to HTTP/2 will certainly help improve its loading speed and Chrome User Experience report indicators taken into account by Google. Moreover, HTTP/2 requires an SSL certificate, if you didn't know it, it's an opportunity to enjoy a small quick win in SEO!
With regard to optimal loading times, as a general rule, a page load that oscillates between 1 and 2 seconds is considered a good experience, between 3 and 5 seconds it remains acceptable; on the other hand everything that is more than 5 seconds requires real optimization, see a performance audit.
Thus, HTTP/2 is not a SEO factor per se, but the sum of the benefits it brings to your site can only be beneficial!
How do I know if my site supports HTTP/2?
Migration to HTTP/2 depends entirely on your server. To find out if it supports this protocol, you should use this free tool: https://http2.pro/.
To check if your website is already using, you can use this tool: https://gf.dev/http2-test, you will have the result instantly.
What are the attention points to consider between WordPress and HTTP/2?
Absolutely none! It is indeed a subject server decorated with WordPress.
However, beware of the configuration of your cache plugin, the settings are not the same between HTTP/1 and HTTP/2, concatenation is an example.
The Word of the End
If you want to learn more about this protocol, we recommend that you read Google's documentation about this: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/http2
