Hi, I want to know can speed of a website / load time, impact in positive way for overall SEO of the website, and secondly do techniques like image compression, do actually help in speeding up the website, I read on an article about (link removed) that it does, can any one share their experience. thanks in advance.

Hi @scottduncan101 great to have you here. Welcome!

Just one thing, before I move on to your question.

And that's not just you. This is for everyone coming here for the first time. Please, do not post links in your first few posts.

If you want to show us your article, get some honest feedback on something, well, it's fine as long as you clearly state it's your work, you own the website, you are member of a team... back it up with your name.

If it's shame for you to admit it's yours, I am sure other members are not interested in it either. Not worth posting it - will be deleted, just like the links in the post above.

Site speed does matter to some extent

If your page loads in 10 seconds, it's bad. Google don't want to serve their users with slow sites. Because it's clearly bad user experience. However, there should not be any difference, if a page loads in 1.00 second or 1.85 seconds. Fastest != Best, so if your pages load in up to 1.5 - 2 seconds, you should be good...

How to get more traffic from organic search?

There are two dimensions your page can grow in organic search.

1. more content
2. higher ranking positions

Generally speaking, create more content & work on your rankings by improving your existing content.

The more keywords/phrases you are ranking for, the more potential traffic to your website.

Usually just posting something in a niche category would attract visitors.

For example, if you hand develop a website, try posting it into the /webdev or /php subreddit and you will get at least 100 visitors in 1-2 days, after that, it really depends on what your site is offering, if the visitors will come back or not.