SEO Speed Tips for Any Website

Google's ranking algorithm is complicated. It's easy to lose track of all of the things that you're supposed to do to keep your website's rank high – you have to generate quality backlinks, avoid duplicate content, optimize your pages for various keywords, and make sure that everything's easily crawlable. Many webmasters get so busy working on all of these things that they forget about one of the most important things to optimize your site for: speed.

Google takes the load speed of your website into consideration when it determines your page rank. While it's not as important a factor as things like the number and quality of links leading into your site, it still affects where your site turns up in search results – especially for a competitive search term. Beyond this, your website's load speed also affects the human visitors you attract. If your page is zippy and quick, visitors more likely to stick around, view ads, and purchase products. If it's sluggish or unresponsive, they'll often leave after just a few seconds. It's important do everything you can to make sure both Google and your visitors are impressed by your load times.

There are a number of optimization tricks you can perform to try to squeeze the most out of your web host and get your site to load faster. First, check out Google's PageSpeed Online. This will give you a good idea about how Google's spiders view your page. It often has a few helpful suggestions about actions you can take to reduce your load times right there. Be sure to check both the desktop and mobile versions of your site to make sure you're optimized for every category. (Consider checking out Yahoo's YSlow tool for another perspective on your website's load speed.)

If you're unhappy with how your page responds, try checking the "big stuff" first. Things like pictures, scripts, and other large objects have to be delivered to your visitor's browser each time they load the page. You can use Google Image Search to quickly view all the pictures on your website by using the "site:http://yoursite.com/" search function. Try compressing large pictures by changing the file format, lowering the quality, or even reducing the size. You'll likely find that you have a few images that don't need to be quite as big as they are.

No matter how much you optimize your page, you're still at the mercy of your web host. It doesn't matter how small your pictures are or how zippy your scripts are if your server doesn't respond to queries for several seconds. Be especially wary of shared hosting. Even if you don't see an increase in your own traffic, other sites hosted on the same server might be getting hammered with thousands of requests. This can slow your site to a crawl and dramatically increase your load times.

You don't ever know when a set of spiders is going to crawl your website. If Google comes to check out your new pages at the same time that your shared host is giving you trouble, your site could plunge right back down to the bottom of the ranks. Additionally, most shared hosting services don't give you the level of control you need to make sure that your site is delivering content as quickly as possible. Custom plug-ins like Google Mod_Speed can shave milliseconds off of your load times and ensure that your rank is as high as possible. Without access to your Apache plug-ins, it's impossible to make these tweaks and optimize your website.

If SEO is your goal, choose your web host carefully. Make sure your hosting provider guarantees reliable speed and up-time, ensuring that you don't miss any traffic. While the pricing offered by shared hosting providers may seem appealing, make sure you consider the downsides. You want your site delivered to your visitors. Why pay for someone else's pages?

Need help?  Contact the Website Optimization experts today.

Website Optimization
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