Posted by on June 13th, 2010 View Comments
Posted in SEO - Search Engine Optimization |
Still confused about whether a web page’s speed is a critical factor for high rankings in search engines? This issue has been running through the minds of site owners and SEOs for quite a while. Well, the search engine powerhouse Google has finally shed some light and alleviated some SEO anxiety over this concern last month. Google has finally announced to the online community that a page’s speed is indeed a legitimate factor to determine a site’s search rankings, at least for their own search engine.
There has been already news circulating since late last year about the significance of a web page’s loading speed as a determinant of search engine rankings, SEO success and conversions. Actually, other members of the online community have found this news rather old since the issue was already brought up by Google’s own Matt Cutts during an interview regarding the recent Google Caffeine update. Some site owners and SEO experts have already started taking into account a speed factor even before this announcement was released. But what we are looking at here at the moment is Google’s initiative to create a clearer picture of the playing field and eliminate all the anxiety and doubts site owners and webmasters might have. Prior to the announcement, Google had never been clear whether or not loading speed is a factor in search ranking computations.
Basically, the website’s loading speed determines how its web pages respond to a web request. Faster site speed is always favorable for both users who want nothing but an optimal browsing experience and for site owners who want nothing but mounting incoming links and high conversion rates. Google has examined how Internet users react to site speed and found out that users give importance to faster speeds.
Google undertook an experiment where they intentionally decreased their own search engine speed by 100 to 400 milliseconds, and it revealed that there was a decrease on the average number of Google searches users did by 0.2% to 0.6%. Users’ searches actually decreased further the longer they were exposed to the slower results Google deliberately produced. Even if they returned Google’s site speed back to normal, user searches continued to decline up to an average of .21% for the next five weeks.
Certainly, the faster the page’s loading speed, the more engaged users will be with the site, and bounce rates will lessen. On the other hand, the slower the site speed, the lesser the user engagement since people will look for other alternative sites based from their query. People prefer an optimal web experience where pages respond and show up in an instant.
Take note that Google has already taken into account site speed as a significant factor of rankings. They have been measuring the speed of all the sites they have indexed though either Googlebot—and how fast a page responds to it—or the page’s load time as measured by the Google Toolbar. However, it is still important to consider other factors when it comes to higher rankings, and not only focus on speed. Site speed is just among the many other search ranking factors like backlinks, site structure, etc. Also, there are other factors that are more significant, like relevancy and quality of content. Thus, you have to focus and prioritize the most immediate concerns regarding actual site content before worrying too much about speed.
With Google’s official announcement, a lot of site owners and SEOs would surely start scrambling to improve their web pages with site speed taken into consideration. You may want to first evaluate your site’s speed through various free tools. Some popular tools you may want to consider would be Page Speed, an Open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that tests the web site’s performance and gives suggestions for improvement, or Webmaster Tools, a tool that presents charts showing the speed of your site as experienced by its visitors.
