Page Load Speed To Become An Important SEO Factor
Page load speed has always been seen as a peripheral issue when it came to SEO. It seems this may change with Google at least hinting that page load speed could have an impact on search rankings. It has never been a non-issue as far as having a quality site goes. If your page is slow to load, chances are, visitors will leave before the page has finished loading.
There have been two threads constantly coming out of Google this year – quality content and speed. In an interview with WebProNews, Matt Cutts spoke about page load times and that some within Google thought the web as a whole should be fast. He went on to say:
“….so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.”
Page load times are always going to impact on users. We are in a fast-paced society where everything needs to happen right now – web pages included. How do you speed up your pages? There are a number of ways including:
- Minimize external factors – if you have a few scripts that make calls to other web sites (like advertising banners), this can slow your overall page load times.
- Optimize images – use thumbnails linked to a full size picture; restrict the size of the image using the height and width commands (I am surprised at how many blogs use images that overlap their sidebars??); restrict the number of images on a page.
- Optimize video and audio – don’t use auto run video or audio files as they can really slow down a page load time; like images, limit the number of videos on one page.
- Optimize page code - get a professional to optimize your page code. You will be surprised at how much speed you can gain with optimized code.
- Optimize sidebars – for blogs, use a theme that loads the content first and the sidebars second. Your visitors can at least see the content loaded. This is particularly useful if using external ad scripts.
Faster pages provide a better user experience. Slower pages turn visitors away. Whether or not Google includes load times is not really the issue. Making a site user friendly should be your number one aim and should still be a part of your SEO strategy.
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