On April 9, 2010, Google officially announced that they will be using site speed as a new signal in their search rankings. This is no surprise to internet users since we are all fully aware that at Google they are obsessed with speed. Just so the definition of “site speed” is clear to everyone, Google has said, “Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.” This new change now gives all site owners and webmasters a new factor to consider when developing their search engine optimization strategies.

Audiences have been expecting this new change to come sooner or later. Google has already been using page load speed as a factor in determining quality scores in PPC campaigns, so this is a logical step for the popular search engine. We are currently living in a world that is obsessed with instant satisfaction, and recognizing this, Google planned accordingly. In their research, Google found that people spend less time on websites that run slow, and improving site speed reduces operating costs. That being said, it is safe to say that this new speed factor will benefit both website users and owners everywhere.

Google has posted several free sites that can be used by search engine optimization strategists and website owners to evaluate the speed of their pages:

•Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages.
•YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
•WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
•In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world.

When developing your search engine optimization strategy, it is important to remember that site speed does not carry as much weight as relevance of a page. The launch of this new factor occurred a few weeks ago, and less than 1% of search queries have been affected by the change. Google is just reminding website owners that internet users have a serious need for speed in cyberspace.

Source.

Written by Jacquelynn M.

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