Site Speed Now A SEO Factor

DiTesco 1596 Views, ,
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Not so long ago, I have posted an article that provided users some insights as to whether site speed is an important SEO factor or not. As of the date that article was posted, it was only rumored that Google would eventually consider your website’s loading time a factor on their search ranking algorithms. Site speed has long been considered to improve users experience and yesterday, the rumor, has been demystified.

It is now official, site speed is a new signal for determining search engine rankings. Google released the statement on their blog yesterday, announcing that site speed speed is officially in full effect. Here is an excerpt of this statement:

You may have heard that here at Google we’re obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

As you can see, it is now more important than ever to get your hands “dirty” again. Check your site speed performance and start making your website load quickly. I am sure that there are many resources you can find on the internet that will guide you on how to achieve this.

What do you think about this move? Something you already expected would happen? Can you give us some ideas on how to improve your site’s speed?

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

7 thoughts on “Site Speed Now A SEO Factor”

  • This is true, but we still don’t know what the meaning of “site load quickly” by numbers, like what is the blog speed we should reach for example…

    So, I think the ideal thing is to work on site load speed as much as we can to enhance our users experience, even if we don’t care too much for it as a factor of getting higher rankings, as I am sure this is not a very important factor for rankings by reading Matt’s recent post!

    I like this idea, because it will make internet surfers more happy people, and this will mostly serve people who have bad & slow connections to the internet… they still exists in some parts of the world, hey will be happy people 😉
    .-= Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..Really… What is MMO Social Networking and Bookmark site? =-.

    • Hi Hesham. It is true that the benchmark has not yet been set as to what that the ideal page load speed would be considered optimum. Considering what Google provides on the webmasters tools, I would think that a website loading time under 10 secs would be a good average.

      On the side on Matts post. This is common. He always undervalues every single ranking factor, so as to not make people crazy like they used to on PR. But if every single small or unimportant factor is not addressed, then it is my opinion that a websites rank will suffer. Obviously this is only an important issue for people who are doing business online.

  • I just installed the FireFox plugin for Google’s Page Speed, think it’ll be good to review the site’s performance before it got any worse. 😛 I agree with Hesham in this and we just do what we can, whether it’s going to be a priority or not. Monitoring page speed is an advantage, not to be over-panicked but love to see how the results turn out in the end, time will tell. 🙂

    Love your theme, it confirms me more into shifting to Thesis very soon. A whole new platform.. I can see a lot of work ahead but excited. May need to ask you or Hesham’s expertise if I encountered any difficulties.

    @wchingya
    Social/Blogging Tracker
    .-= Ching Ya´s last blog ..4 Major Tips to Personalize Your Twitter Background =-.

    • Hi Ching. I think that Hesham, you, me and the whole community basically agree not to panic about this new signal from Google. Nevertheless if you think about it, it does bring a “new” life while surfing. There are some people who will just have to do some work and get those sites to load faster. Maybe this will eliminate a lot of intrusive “items” and concentrate more on quality:) We’ll see.

      As for my expertise on Thesis, that’s a huge compliment. I’m an advanced user (not an expert) and I have to admit that this theme makes it very easy to understand how “things” work. Fire away Ching. You know you can count on me:)

      • Yeap! when ever I think about Thesis… I think it’s a theme that really teach you!
        .-= Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..How Much Is My Site Worth? =-.

    • Shift your blog to Thesis, and you will get a complete support from my side 😉

      I have just started a new project that will help out all Thesis users… you will love it.. I will tell about it on the right time.
      .-= Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog ..Really… What is MMO Social Networking and Bookmark site? =-.

      • There you go Ching. I knew that Hesham would be there, as always. This man rocks. Glad to see you here bro..

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