Speed affects your Ranks in Google
It’s official, from now on the speed of your site will affect your search engine rankings in Google.
What does this mean?
Simple actually. Just like Google takes into consideration your meta tags, page content, websites who link to you and many more factors to determine how well you are ranked in their search engine index, it will now also look at how fast your website loads.
According to studies they’ve done, the speed of your site affects the users of your site either in a bad way (when it’s slow) or in a good way (when it’s nice and fast). Further to this, they’ve also determined that a faster website actually brings down operating costs for the website.
There are various tools to test how fast your website loads, of which I developed a simple one at Web Speed Test.
Does it really matter that much?
In terms of ranking in Google’s Search Index, I don’t think it really matters that much. If you read their official post you’ll see that they mention it will only count a small part towards your ranking. Where it does matter though, is in the experience your users have when they use your site.
How can I speed up my website?
It doesn’t mean that you need to go out and spend a lot of money for better hosting. In most cases a few small changes to your website can improve the speed of the website considerably, without really costing you much.
Things to try:
- Use smaller (as in file size) images
- If you’re using any scripting language, such as PHP, make sure the code has been well written to make use of as little memory as possible
- Make use of CDN (Content Delivery Networks) to host your big files
- Check if your web server software can provide a caching option, and enable it
- Optimize your website for a specific task if it only serves one purpose
- Contact CM Computer Services for a free consulation or reach me on Skype Chris Meistre