This month Google announced it will be using site speed as a determinant of search engine ranking. This means that if your web pages are slow to download then this may be taken into account in determining your site’s position in search engine results.
How Can I Tell if My Site is Slow?
Google’s Webmaster Tools is a prerequisite for any website. If you don’t use it then set it up now! One of its utilities is Site Performance which provides an informative graphic indicating the speed of your site. The ideal is within the green area.
Site speed as indicated by Webmaster Tools.
Why Might My Site Be Slow?
A multitude of issues can slow up your site – poor hosting server performance, large uncompressed photos, and bloated HTML code are just some of the culprits.
Unfortunately many websites are still using outdated HTML tables as the basis for their pages. These pages should be rebuilt using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which produce leaner pages with additional benefits including accessible and search engine friendly web pages.
What Next?
Setup Webmaster Tools if you don’t already use it and review Site Performance. If your site is consistently outside the green area then ask your web designer to investigate the reason for this.
Tags: google, search optimisation, webmaster tools