This is something that I have kept my eye on for a while. Over a year ago I started to pick up signals that Google was starting to test the value of adding page load speed to their ranking factors the signals were clear Matt Cutts principal engineer for Google was hinting about it. Then introduction of the speed test plug in for the firebug plug in and lastly seeing the data displayed in webmasters tools were all clear signs.

In April they had officially added load time to their ranking factors. What does it mean for you or your clients site? It means its time to speed it up. We will cover a few speed items that you should be considering. Some of these may be a simple code fix; the flip side is that after you run your speed test you may find that a complete site rebuild is in order.

First you need to download the speed tool. You can do this by either adding the plug in to you Firebug plug in for Firefox. Wait you don’t have the Firebug plug in you say ok here’s the link http://getfirebug.com/ now after you get that installed you will want to go here http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/ and install the speed tool.

There is another way to check the speed of your site. If you log into your Google webmaster account you will see site performance data there. Wait again you don’t have a webmasters account? OK OK go here www.google.com/webmasters/tool/ sing in or create an account and follow the instructions.

Now let’s look at some of the speed ranking factors. The key to speeding up your site is to reduce the amount of data that is sent and requested. A few things come into play, the construction of your site the kind of CMS you are using and where it is hosted to touch on just a few.

Image optimization

Images are known for slowing down sites. There are a few things you can do to optimize your images. The first tactic you can use is to optimize the size of the image in an image editing application. The second tactic is to use your CSS for design elements that do not have a layout.

Gzip compression

This is a recommendation that I see from the Google speed test on almost every site. Gzip compression is simply sending a zip file instead of send the index.html file. Why do this? Sending a zip file can say on download time and bandwidth. Plus most modern browsers support this so let them unzip it for you and show the unzipped file to the users.

Minimize DNS lookups

DNS look-ups can add up very fast. A DNS look-up happens when any object on a website is not hosted on the main server. If a site is using multiple 3rd party advertising platforms or widgets it can slow things down. In the eyes of the spiders, if they have to make several DNS look-ups this can tell them that the site speed is slow. One solution is to only use one advertising solution on your site and host additional ads locally.

Google Analytics

Google has been working on this issue for sometime now. There analytics code can be potential cause for your site to run slower. They have made some changes to their code and how it communicates with the server.

Cache

Cache is basically making a static copy of your site which the engines will display. This is increase the speed of the loading of your site. If you use a CMS platform like WordPress you will see that you site is dynamically generates which mean that every time there is a request for a page the platform needs to communicate with the database before it can fully load the page. This can take time and slow the site down. The same goes for a search engine when they hit your site; they have to wait for it to load but having a Cached version can help this issue.

Eliminate some of the crap

The more videos, images, logos and all the other crap you put on your web page can have a negative effect on performance. Sure it looks nice but search engines are not looking at how pretty your site is they want to see your content and they want to see it fast they are very busy bots and have places to go. This should be a big consideration when designing your site. If you’re going to sell advertising try only having a few ads instead of 20, and if you want to host a ton of video and images it might be wise to take a look at a content delivery network to host your video and images.

I hope you can use some of these suggestions to help improve the performance of your site and I hope it sparked a different mindset of how you look at your site.

©2010 840 Media. All Rights Reserved.

I see it all the time among the less scrupulous “SEO” providers. They promise to achieve rankings for your top keywords using their “proprietary” formula or one size fits all tools for search engine optimization. They claim to have used the same strategy and tactics for all of their clients who all sing their praises. First of all, I doubt the validity of most of their “client testimonials” but a few may actually be truthful. The real point is that using the same strategy for all websites doesn’t work. Just because a certain strategy worked for a body shop website doesn’t mean that it will work for a brand new “adult” site. Attempting to make SEO into a one size fits all service is going to guarantee limited success and in some cases outright failure.

Don’t Strive for Mediocrity

At best one size fits all SEO will lead to mediocre results and at worst it will lead to complete and utter failure. The reason is each market or industry is different. The level of competition is different and the immersion into the Internet is different. While it may be easy to get a few links and put together a simple site and perform well for one market it will require a much more monumental effort for something that is exceedingly competitive. Quality SEO depends on extensive competitive research to understand how competitive a market is. Using that competitive research along with knowledge of the business itself should allow for an SEO plan to develop. Relying on what was done in the past simply will not work.

Achieve Success with an Original Plan

Take that competitive research and the knowledge of the business and develop a comprehensive strategy utilizing tactics that will achieve the results desired. Now I’m not saying that the basic SEO framework must be different for every website. Keyword research, link development, content development, technical analysis, and all that good stuff is still necessary. The strategy, tactics, resources, and effort are what’s going to vary. The more competitive a market the more its going to take to succeed. Forget the one size fits all SEO and start developing unique strategies with specialized tactics that are going to work in the particular market or industry you are attempting to enter. Otherwise it simply won’t work.

©2010 840 Media. All Rights Reserved.