brand marketing blog

Matt Cutts of Google recently confirmation by that the search giant is using the loading speed of web pages as a factor in their ranking algorithm. Their argument is that a fast loading site is a prerequisite to a positive visitor experience, therefore it is something that they value.

Until now, Google has hinted at including page load speed into the algorithm, but never gave any formal commitment to the idea. As it turns out, they have been factoring page load speed into ranking for the past few weeks already.

Whilst load speed is great for visitors, it’s a bit of a headache for web developers. If your website design is simple and shy of graphics, it will load fast. Unfortunately there are instances where usability and the target market requires a site to have a decent amount of graphics and other sizable components, slowing the load time.

There is a really neat free tool available that analyses your page URL, displays the load time, page and object size and other information regarding the URL.

It makes suggestions regarding areas that can be optimised for faster loading, including graphic elements, smarter coding of JavaScript and CSS and a few other valuable insights.

I’m not suggesting that all of your websites need to immediately be rebuilt purely with load speed in mind. It’s only a very small element in Google’s indexing algorithm. But you do need to keep load speed in mind when you’re designing a new site or revamping an existing one.

You can perform your own free test at http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/