This is probably a dumb question – hence me asking it here.
I`ve been told that load time is now a large factor in SEO. I have a site that is largely photo driven. I have optimized it in every possible way – compressing images, using a CDN, minimizing and combining js/css, etc. But the pages still take a while, because photography is the major issue of the site.
My question is: Does Google take into account the load time of large images separately from underlying load speeds (which are more based on configuration), or does it just say `it took five seconds to load this page, let`s penalize it`?
If the latter, I can split every article into multiple pages so that the load per page is lessened, but this weakens the user experience (which would appear to be the opposite of what Google intends). This seems to be what most major sites do with their photo articles, and as a user (especially on mobile) I find it incredibly frustrating.
As I say, probably a dumb question, but I figured I`d ask, because I`m hoping Google treats large compressed images differently for the purposes of SEO rank.?
