Posts Tagged ‘page load speed’

Google announced a few months ago that Webpage load speed now has a small bearing on ranking in relation to SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) i.e. it is better to have faster loading Pages. There was quite a vocal reaction to this news by various Webmasters and Web designers.  Google, Bing and Yahoo have always maintained that the best Search Engine Optimization (SEO) activities are those that enhance the Site for visitors. The speed at which a Webpage loads is vitally important to Web-surfers. People don’t like to wait for Pages to load and are likely to visit an alternate and faster Site when experiencing slow Page load speeds.

As noted previously, and blogged by Matt Cutts, the influence on SERPs of speed is very small. The move to highlight the need to reduce page load speeds wherever possible should be welcomed by the average Web surfer who wants a better Online experience. Designers and Webmasters too should not fear the minuscule focus on speed as if they are good in their roles they will already be ensuring that image sizes aren’t unnecessarily large, video is compresses,  caching is enabled where appropriate etc. Minor Website amendments can result in significant speed gains so it is worth spending time consulting with tools such as Yahoo YSlow and Google Page Speed

Page load speed has been part of Google’s competitive advantage since its inception. Web page load speed can also be a competitive advantage for your Site.

Incoming search terms for this article:

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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):

1. Improve Website Speed

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:

1.1. Host in the same country as your primary target audience

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.

1.2. Use Expires header.

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).

1.3. Use caching

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.

1.4. Minify

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 »

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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!

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