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Will web page speed become a more important
ranking factor?
Google's Matt Cutts recently suggested that the speed of
a web page may soon get more attention in Google's ranking
algorithm. It seems that Google focuses on fast websites to
make the searching experience better.
What can you do to make your web pages faster?
Of course, you should start by choosing a reliable web host
that has a good connection to the Internet. Your web server
should be easy to reach and it shouldn't have any down time.
In addition to choosing a fast web host, you can do the following
to make your web pages faster:
Combine external JavaScript code files into one file. The
fewer files the server has to request, the faster your web
pages will load.
Compress your JavaScript code to make the JavaScript file
smaller.
Combine external CSS files into one file and compress your
CSS files.
If your web server supports it, enable gZip compression (your
web host can do that for you).
Use as few images as possible on your website and compress
your images. Most graphic tools enable you to choose the compression
rate when saving an image for the web.
Put tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets at the end
of your web pages.
Analyze your web pages with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to get
an idea of the speed of your website. In addition, to many
other web page elements, the top 10 optimizer also analyzes
the speed of your website and it will tell you if your website
is slower than the websites of your competitors.
Is it a good idea to use the loading time in the ranking
algorithm?
While fast loading pages are good for web searchers, using
the page loading time in the ranking algorithm can cause problems
for smaller businesses:
Businesses will be forced to choose a fast (and probably
expensive) web host if they want to be found in the search
results.
People with a low income or businesses from a country with
slow Internet connections won't be able to compete with companies
that have more money.
Big corporations that have a very good connection to the Internet
will have an advantage.
The big websites will get bigger and the small websites will
get smaller.
The role of the page loading time in Google's ranking algorithm
isn't clear yet so the above points are speculation at this
time.
Optimizing the loading time of your web pages is a good idea,
no matter how large the effect of loading time on your website
rankings will be. The faster your web pages load, the more
visitors of your website will be able to see the contents
of your pages.
Web surfers are impatient people. The average web surfer
wants immediate results. For that reason, your website should
be fast loading and it should also contain clearly arranged
content that makes it easy to read your pages.
IBP's Top 10 Optimizer will also assign a Flesch?Kincaid
readability score to your web pages after analyzing the content
of your website. The higher the score, the more difficult
to read are your web pages.
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