Gary Eckstein

Google has named Webpage load speed as a ranking factor. This means that when Google calculates in which position to display results in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), faster loading Webpages may be positioned more prominently. There are several hundred factors that Google uses when considering where to place a Webpage in the SERPs so load speed will only have a small bearing. More ‘noise’ however is coming from Google about Webpage and Website load speeds including an interesting article where data regarding the average load speed and related factors for several billion pages were analysed. Google also made headlines recently with the announcement about its own public DNS to assist with speeding up the resolution of names to IP addresses.

Google is not alone in their quest for speed; the fantastic speed measurement and recommendation tool Yslow for Firebug by Yahoo is used by many to optimize page load speed. Yahoo has introduced other speed enhancement Tools including the very newly released boomerang which is some JavaScript that runs on each page and measures various performance matrices. Yahoo also provides other awesome performance enhancing free tools such as smush.it.

There are also other free tools (both Online and software applications) that assist with speed measurement against various performance matrices. One of the little known but very useful tools is WebPagetest which should be given a try.

Website performance is becoming increasingly important as a Search Engine Optimization task. Although Page load speeds only have a small bearing on the SERPs at present, all indicators are that Website performance will become ever more important as an SEO activity.

• Google Announces new Ranking Factor
• 10 Steps – SPEED up your WebSite
• Speed up your Website to keep Visitors

Load speed of WebPages is increasingly becoming important, not only for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but also because people are becoming ever more intolerant of slow Websites. As Internet network speeds have increased (ADSL, 3G, WiMax etc.) so content of Websites has increased therefore negating some of the benefits of faster networking.

The obvious question that many people on my SEO and Web related courses ask is how to improve Website Speed. There are two factors here; Website speed and Webpage speed. Both are interrelated but probably best described separately (recommendations include on-page and off-page factors and range between non-technical to fairly technical):

Website performance includes factors that will influence the entire site and every affected Webpage. The obvious candidates for improvement are hosting your Website with a high availability provider, ensuring that your Website host has high-speed servers and so on. Some other factors to consider are:

Having your Website hosted close to your target audience can realize big benefits in Website speed. Website I have targeting the U.S.A. are hosted in the U.S. whereas this Website is hosted in Australia due to my primary audience being located in Australia. There are various good cloud hosts such as Amazon EC2 which simultaneously host and deliver from multiple geographic regions. Although often more costly, for busy Websites with multiple targeted countries Cloud hosting is likely beneficial.

Expires header instructs compatible browsers to store the file and use that local file for reuse instead of downloading the file from the Website. An expiry date and time is added according to settings in the .htaccess file and the file is only downloaded again if the expiry date and time has passed or if the browser is otherwise instructed to download all files again (e.g. ctrl + F5 in Firefox). Expires Header settings hugely benefit visitors that revisit your site.

Here is how to enable Expires Header for gif, png, jpg,jpeg, ico, css and javascript:

1. Copy the blue text below

# BEGIN Expires header

ExpiresActive On

ExpiresDefault A0

ExpiresByType image/jpg A1209600

ExpiresByType image/jpeg A1209600

ExpiresByType image/ico A1209600

ExpiresByType image/gif A1209600

ExpiresByType image/png A1209600

ExpiresByType text/css A1209600

ExpiresByType text/javascript A1209600

# END Expires header

2. Open the .htaccess file of your Website which will be in the same folder as index.php or index.htm or similar (open .htaccess with notepad, notepad++ or similar).

3. Paste the copied text into .htaccess at the next line after text already in .htaccess and save changes.

The A1209600 text as entered into .htaccess determines the time for the files to be stored by the browser. 1209600 is calculated as 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 14 days. If you don’t amend affected files often then I recommend increasing the time to, say, 31 days (of course, renaming files on your Webpage/Website will make browsers download the file).

Server-side caching benefits include the minimising of code execution. For example, on almost all websites that include multiple pages and/or anything beyond just plain text multiple files are referenced in compiling the final Webpage. This means that every time a request is made to view a webpage, multiple files are run to produce the output which all results in execution time. One way of eliminating the need for the running of all the files every time a page is viewed is to use caching. Caching stores the files and/or output in a very easily and quickly accessible ‘dynamic’ memory/storage for a period of time. Although caching may not provide significant performance enhancements for Pages accessed infrequently, for busier sites, caching provides considerable speed benefits.

The ‘WP Super Cache’ WordPress plugin is popular in order to enable Website caching.

As described on the main minify page; ‘[minify] combines multiple CSS or Javascript files, removes unnecessary whitespace and comments, and serves them with gzip encoding and optimal client-side cache Read the rest of this entry »

• Speed up your Website to keep Visitors
• Page Load Speed as SEO
• Google Announces new Ranking Factor

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gurus and Website developers take note; Google may soon be including Page Load speed into its ranking algorithm for organic search. This certainly makes sense and has been coming for a long time. Google values its very fast page load speeds and views this as a significant competitive advantage. If Google sees Page Load speed as so important then it is natural that they should include it as a ranking factor.

Of course indications of Webpage and Site load speed being used as ranking factors have been around for a number of years; YSlow (Yahoo) and Page Speed (Google) are both Tools supplied by major Search based organization which measure Page Load speed and provide performance optimizing recommendations.

There will be a minority who are against the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) being influenced by load times. The vast majority of us however will be in favor of this new ranking factor. Page load speed is important to visitors and, as such, should be given credibility; after all, Webpages should be designed for visitors!

• Speed up your Website to keep Visitors
• Page Load Speed as SEO
• 10 Steps – SPEED up your WebSite

In the early days of the Web speed was more necessary than presentation due to bandwidth constraints. Then came DSL/ADSL at which time graphics, Flash content and other bandwidth hungry ‘things’ blossomed. We now seem to be again going towards speed as Webpage best practice. Of course this cycle will likely turn the corner again when Fibre to the Node becomes widespread.

With speed in mind I decided to optimise my Website. Now as, many of my readers will know, I am a bit of a fan of the

Theory of Constraints (TOC) so here is what I did in relation to the TOC ‘five focusing steps’ (yes, Management Theory is just as relevant to I.T. as any other aspect of business):

Firefox with the Firebug and YSlow plugins equals great free Webpage load speed measuring (and recommendation) tools. I started with an overall C grade from YSlow with various recommendations. I decided to concentrate on reducing the number of HTTP requests which in turn would lead to fewer DNS lookups. Not only did my site rate poorly by YSlow in relation to HTTP requests (too many) but is was obvious from accessing the site that it was slow due to fetching data from external Sites.

My Site is run with the mighty WordPress. As far as possible I like to keep WordPress as generic as possible and refrain from too many customizations (I handle customizations through Themes and Plugins). I have amended the CSS of the Theme I use (Hybrid Theme) and performed a few other small tweaks however that’s about it as far as my WordPress customization goes. Fortunately it was very obvious as to how to reduce HTTP requests; turn off WP-Oomph and use fewer images (by eliminating some and combining others).

This step meant making various changes so that once I performed step 4 below my whole Site wouldn’t collapse. In essence this was about planning and preparing the system for the post-elevation (i.e. step 4) state. For example, I just love that WP-oomph provides an easy means for Website visitors to view and store my h-card information. WP-Oomph was taking forever to load on my Site so was reducing my Website performance in relation to load speed. An alternative to WP-Oomph is to display my v-card information in the Footer of the Site. It’s not as pretty as using WP-Oomph however is way quicker to load.

This step was quick and simple. Because in Step 3 I had made the necessary preparation all I needed do in this step was disable the WP-Oomph WordPress Plugin as well as remove the obsolete images.

And now … back to Step 1 and through the process again.

Through following the Theory of Constraints ‘five focusing steps’ I have improved my YSlow rating from a C to an A in less than a day. Thanks Google and thanks Theory of Constraints!

Here are some excellent posts in relation to speeding up your Website:

• .htaccess – gzip and cache your site for faster loading and bandwidth saving
• CSS Sprites: How Yahoo.com and AOL.com Improve Web Performance
• Some WordPress optimization tips

• 10 Steps – SPEED up your WebSite
• The Theory of Constraints – in Plain English
• Page Load Speed as SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an art and science combined. SEO basics are well publicised such as the importance of linking, the use of relevant keywords in text and publishing of fresh content. Unfortunately what we know about SEO best practice is a small proportion of what the search engines use to determine the important of a website. Bing, Yahoo, Google and the other Search Engines / Answer Engines use hundreds of factors to determine where to rank websites and pages in organic search results.

One factor which isn’t often discussed as an important SEO activity is the loading speed of pages (page load time). The Search Engines, in their SEO guidance, continuously advise that creating content for people is SEO best practice. Page load time in critical in getting people to visit pages other than landing pages of a site as well as getting people to revisit the website. It would therefore no be surprising if Google, Bing and the others use page load time as part of their ranking algorithms.

There are numerous means for improving page load times such as placing applicable JavaScript just before the closing </body> tag (e.g. MyBlogLog and Google Analytics code) and reducing image sizes. Fortunately there are also some great tools to assist with identifying where enhancements to load times may be realised; Recently Google have released a tool, similar to the awesome Yahoo YSlow, called Page Speed.

Page Speed is an Open Source Project and is a Firefox Add-on which works in tandem with the Firebug Add-on. Page Speed analyses various factors on the web page, from the clients’ perspective, and makes suggestions for speed improvements. Both YSlow and Page Speed may be used without financial cost therefore are well worth engaging.

People do not stay on websites which are slow to load. Being aware of the need for high performance websites is critical for effective SEO and using tools such as Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow will assist with identifying where load speeds may be improved.

• Google Announces new Ranking Factor
• 10 Steps – SPEED up your WebSite
• Speed up your Website to keep Visitors