Part of the overall experience of a user is the site speed. You don’t notice it unless it’s bad, but web sites on average load very quickly in our modern internet age. Anything over 2 seconds seems slow. For the most part this has been an issue of user experience, which is of course very important to the success of your web site. Google has started a push to recognize user behaviour metrics as part of their ranking index, it goes without saying speed would eventually fall into that category.
Turns out, it will/has. The new Google Caffeine update (the latest algorithm to roll out) will come out in the New Year, and SITE SPEED will be factor.
Not only will it be a factor, but its importance will slowly increase as time rolls on.
Thus, users need to know that the way their site behaves as benchmarked versus industry competitors will now not only factor in your user experience, but your rankings as well.
View this post and video from WebPro News for more information.
What can you do? Pay more attention to the metrics for page load speed. There is a handy set of tools for you to view. Firstly, a new page speed resource page from Google gives you a list of articles and tools to pay attention to. Of particular usefulness is a free open source Firefox plugin that will analyze a multitude of factors attributed to your page load time. It’s called Page Speed, download it here.
So we have tools and now a public push from Google to do what we’ve always known to be important: create error free and efficient web code that will maximize user experience on our web sites. Good luck with this new endeavor.
If you find yourself a bit confused how to use the tools or where to make the fixes (be it on page issues or a problem with a bad host), Distinct SEO Inc. can offer assistance, just contact us with an inquiry and we’d be happy to check it out.