The need for speed.
Google is on a mission and it has implications for Search Engine Optimisation in general and your website in particular!
Over the past several months Google has been talking about its desire to make the web work faster. As more and more people increasingly spend more and more time on the web – shopping, researching, watching films and now even reading whole books – the pressure is on to improve web performance. Google's founders say they would like it to be as quick and easy as flipping through pages of a magazine.
Google has stated that it sees itself playing a major advocacy role in pushing the Internet to work faster, to deliver content more quickly. Of course Google is not just talking about this – they are actively working to make it happen. We are seeing the rollout now of Google’s Caffeine project which is basically an upgrade to the Google data centres which will speed up the search response times and also improve the time taken to index pages.
But that is not all that Google are doing - and this is where things get a lot more interesting if your business benefits from being found online (and these days whose business doesn’t?!)
It would appear that Google want to make site speed – or more accurately ‘page speed’ a new element in to the SEO mix. Users understandably prefer websites that perform quickly, therefore if your site loads quicker and displays information faster, then you should be recognised for that in the search returns. Obviously your site must still have very good and relevant content but that notwithstanding, if your pages load quicker than your competitors your site should be ranked higher in the search returns.
To help webmasters improve the performance of their websites Google have introduced a range of tools and information about what to do and how to do it. Have a look here Google Tools If you just want to get a quick assessment of your website and how well it’s performing in terms of speed, this is a useful site; www.webpagetest.org/
To be fair to Google they often do flag up in advance any new factors that they are looking to introduce that impact on the way they rank websites and pages within those sites, before they start to apply them and this would seem to be the stage we are at now.
This new emphasis on speed is here to stay and Google are pushing it hard. So be prepared to be rewarded if you have a fast and efficiently built website, equally if your website is old or poorly architected it is likely that your SERPs positions (Search Engine Page Returns) will start to suffer as a result. But more than that you should consider the imapct of your poorly pefoming website on the "user experience". How many of your site visitors are giving up on your old, slow site before you have a chance to convert them into prospects?!
As other commentators are already saying; “Many small business owners have older or outdated sites. It costs money to design a new site, and time to build it, so a new site is often far down the list of "things to do" for many small businesses. With this projected change in how Google looks at your site, a new site might become a must if pages on your old site load slowly with bloated code and clunky images.”
If you have any questions about this article or if you think you need help with improving the speed of your website please don’t hesitate to call Jo on 01793 832102 or use our Contact Us form. We would be delighted to hear from you.