Site Speed will be a Ranking Factor in 2010

Google recently announced that speed will become an important factor for ranking your website in 2010. While it was obvious that Google bots can’t index content if you have a slow loading site, but this was never a major ranking factor.

However at the latest Pubcon conference in Las Vegas Matt talked about the importance of speed and how Google is making the web a faster place with the launch of SPDY research project

Matt also mentioned that speed will be a vital factor in 2010, your page loads will have a direct impact on how your site ranks in Google.

But why wait till 2010, you can start working on increasing the speed of your web pages right now, this proactive approach will give your site a head start and have a positive impact your search results.

Making your site faster will also improve your readers experience and have a positive impact on your sales.

If you are serious about reducing your sites load time, you can start to work on the below mentioned factors.

– Optimizing image sizes:
Bigger the images, bigger the image size. Image size is one of the top factors in increasing site load times. Keep your images sizes small less than 30 k and use .png extension. Define your image width and size wherever possible. I generally use 250 x 300 as an image size depending on the post.

– Reduce Http requests :
Take a look at your sites http request and reduce the unnecessary codes and scripts or combine them. Every piece of code or image on your webpage increases the number of http requests. You may also simplify your blog design and reduce excess code that adds to increasing the web loading time.

This blog runs on the Thesis Theme, Thesis theme has less code resulting in increasing the blog speed and reduces site load time

– Optimize Javascripts and CSS scripts :
Avoid using multiple CSS and javascripts, the code consumes a lot of server resources and increases load times. Make javascripts and CSS external, using external files reduces the load time as java scripts and CSS files are cached by the browser.

– Reduce the number of plugins :
Reduce the number of plugins that you have on your blog. More the plugins, more the load time. If you are not using any plugins deactivate them in your wordpress admin panel.

– Minimize website errors:
Every 404 error page increases server and load time. Ensure that your pages have appropriate 302 redirects and regularly check broken links on the site.

– Use Google Webmaster tools:
Google Webmaster Tool is an amazing tool that helps you check indexing of your site, ensure that you utilize the webmaster tools effectively to optimize your website

– Check your Hosting :
Web hosting is an important factor that will impact the speed and loading of your blog or website.

Most blogs have shared hosting, which means that your blog will be shared with other 1000’s of websites on the same server. Shared hosting reduces speed, if you can afford then I recommend using a dedicated web host for your blog.

– Using a Content Delivery Network :
If you have a large scale website or blog you may want to check out options about deploying your content across multiple geographically dispersed servers. These servers will make your pages load faster.

Pingomatic recently published a report on internet users expectations of faster load times , the survey was commissioned by Akamai.

The above are some of the factors that will impact your website speed, you can also check out Yahoo’s best practices for speeding up your website

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What You Need to know about Google’s Featured Snippets?

55 comments

Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com November 23, 2009 - 6:44 am
Thanks for sharing! You can use http://tools.pingdom.com/ to test the speed of your blog - it tells you how long each step of your blog takes to load. Install the plugin, WP-Super-Cache - http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/ and I recently installed WP-Optimize - http://www.ruhanirabin.com/wp-optimize/ - you can install it, use it, then deactivate it. If installing new plugins, make sure you test your blog on several browsers afterwards to make sure it still loads as expected. Andrew .-= Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com´s last blog ..How to add an image when you add a blog comment =-.
Lee Ka Hoong@Make Money Online November 24, 2009 - 10:19 pm
Thanks for sharing the testing speed tool Andrew, my blog needs 25 seconds to load as shown in the result, and your blog needs about 16 seconds. Perhaps I need to decrease some of the images in my blog. Also, thanks for sharing the plugin, I'm going to install the wp-super-cache plugin, perhaps I need your help on that. :) .-= Lee Ka Hoong@Make Money Online´s last blog ..Make Money Blogging Guide For Beginners =-.
Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com November 25, 2009 - 5:24 am
Lee, How to install the plugin, WP-Super-Cache is in my free guide - you downloaded it, didn't you? Andrew .-= Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com´s last blog ..How to Attract 365,000 Red-Hot Visitors to Your Blog Like Bees to Honey – Without AdWords…now with 30% off =-.
ZK November 23, 2009 - 6:56 am
Thanks Andrew for sharing the plugins with us :)
oes tsetnoc November 23, 2009 - 10:50 am
Thank to you for such a new information. .-= oes tsetnoc´s last blog ..Google adsense Featured ads With a Star mark =-.
Online TV December 14, 2009 - 10:37 pm
I seriously hope it never becomes one, because it's very difficult and it also means that bigger sites that have resources and labour to put to something like this can dominate. Major companies will tend to overpower smaller sites, especially those who choose to host blogs on one of the many overstuffed hosts like hostgator. .-= Online TV´s last blog ..Temporary Outage =-.
Roseli A. Bakar November 23, 2009 - 7:47 am
Great tips ZK and Andrew, thanks for sharing the WP-Optimize. .-= Roseli A. Bakar´s last blog ..EzyBlogger Featured By Local Newspaper – New Straits Times =-.
Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com November 25, 2009 - 2:11 am
Roseli I hope it helps! Andrew .-= Andrew @ webuildyourblog.com´s last blog ..How to Attract 365,000 Red-Hot Visitors to Your Blog Like Bees to Honey – Without AdWords…now with 30% off =-.
Web Developer November 23, 2009 - 7:54 am
These are great tips on reducing site speed...we all want our sites to be faster and get index by Google
colon cleansing products November 23, 2009 - 11:18 am
its not only great tips but they are really helpful either for newbies or Professionals. But this is really a great change from Google now people will concentrate more on dedicated servers.
ZK November 23, 2009 - 11:35 am
You are right, there will surely be an increase in websites moving their hosting to dedicated servers.
oes tsetnoc November 23, 2009 - 10:49 am
Its mean we have to move our sites to good hosting servers if we have to care about speed
how to articles November 23, 2009 - 1:02 pm
That is cool that speed will now be a factor. Most sites are fine but this will help eliminate some poorly put together sites.
Gaston November 23, 2009 - 11:11 pm
While I can certainly understand why an entity like Google would use loading speed as a criterion for page rank, one thing to remember is that some of the best artisans in the world are barely computer literate. This means, for example, a store selling junk, but with a great web master will always do better on the web than the artisan no matter how good the artisan's product is. Said differently, often a person will be great at only one thing. If that thing doesn't happen to be programming for speed, God help the great artisan.
ZK November 24, 2009 - 3:58 am
@Gaston You are right, it works both ways a webmaster can't be a great artisan and vice versa. However having said that a well marketed website will not be a success if it does not have great products. If the artisan is look to have a web presence, he will have to invest in a skilled webmaster to manage the site. If the webmaster is look to start a website to sell furniture , he will have to source the furniture from a very skilled artisan :)
Phaoloo November 24, 2009 - 4:30 am
Completely great tips. I still wonder this: will things loaded by ajax technique be crawled by the search engine? and does it affect? We just use httprequest for the blog content and some important sections of blog while using ajax to load additional things. .-= Phaoloo´s last blog ..How To Know Your Brand Is Stolen? Tools To Figure Out =-.
Davits November 24, 2009 - 5:52 am
I'll check my site time loading speed. I'll care these points. Thanks for information.
Melvin November 24, 2009 - 7:01 am
well its just early this year that i checked out the webmaster tools from Google and all I can say is that there is really a lot of value in their tools and diagnostic tests..
how to articles November 26, 2009 - 10:55 am
I love the google webmaster tools.
Dave Lucas November 24, 2009 - 11:48 am
Hmmmmm... could this be why my traffic suddenly slid off the cliff???
Tinh November 25, 2009 - 1:52 am
Yes, it is very important, Google has applied this silently but only officially announced by Matt, this is a necessary step to launch Caffeine I guess .-= Tinh´s last blog ..Thanksgiving Giveaway: Win Thesis WordPress Theme from WPWebhost =-.
reverse phone lookup usa November 25, 2009 - 5:30 am
I just read about one such report on WebPronews.I do not think that it will make much of a difference though. .-= reverse phone lookup usa´s last blog ..Reverse Phone Lookup in USA =-.
David@Promotional Products November 25, 2009 - 5:52 am
i only prefer security addons and not any third party addons, that increase time of server loading and also affect to your web codes.
prince2 course November 25, 2009 - 6:07 am
Would this suggest that one should pay more for webhosting services? What about flash site? A lot of things affect the site load speed, I don't know if focusing on speed would simply limit the possibilities of web development.
Paul@diabetis November 25, 2009 - 4:44 pm
Good thing that my blog is loading fast as of now. Hope to keep it it that way. .-= Paul@diabetis´s last blog ..My Nephew, the Nurse =-.
Sell Property Fast November 26, 2009 - 12:34 am
It should be! bcoz many site are working very slow, still they have a good PR then the sites that has high PR, would be considered more!!
how to articles November 26, 2009 - 10:56 am
Time to upgrade to better hosting.
Harry November 29, 2009 - 5:32 pm
Google probably cut a deal with webhosts so a bunch of n00bs would upgrade their hosting in a knee jerk fear reaction.
bloggeri @ Blog Handbook November 26, 2009 - 11:36 am
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. In my opinion it is a great thing that google will start thinking about load times. Load times are a big factor for people visiting websites and it is excellent that this will start to show also in the search results. Basically if the site load takes too long, then people wil generally not like the site. No matter if the content is top noch. .-= bloggeri @ Blog Handbook´s last blog ..Community Effort: How to Get People Commenting on Blog Posts =-.
Dennis Edell November 26, 2009 - 3:44 pm
A good tip for JavaScript - whenever possible, place it as close to the bottom of your site as possible. I don't know what you meant by external. Another techo dope question - I don't get any of that http request jargon. .-= Dennis Edell´s last blog ..Are You Thankful For Your Blogging Community? =-.
Frank@The New Forest National Park November 30, 2009 - 11:45 am
Yes this is a good news, doing so will help people to post articles more and more, atleast the unique ness of articles will loose its importance somewhere if this rule will be applied to net marketing.
George@new york personal injury lawyer November 30, 2009 - 12:06 pm
Hey that's a great news if speed will be a ranking factor then I am sure the posting of article in bulk will be more and more and people will find this as an easy way to earn bucks more.
Painter Portland November 30, 2009 - 12:31 pm
That means page optimization is as important as link building.
Web Design December 1, 2009 - 3:26 am
The quicker your site loads, the better. Not only will the search engine bots give you extra credit for extra speed, but the ADD nature of people's attention span these days dictates that if your page doesn't load fast, they will go look for the information somewhere else.
game-girl December 1, 2009 - 5:24 am
I must improve the speed of downloading on my site.The plugin helps to see the problem.Thanks for the help. .-= game-girl´s last blog ..Соломон Кейн скачать фильм онлайн =-.
Dave@Philippines Call Center Lawyer December 1, 2009 - 6:46 am
I use WP-Super-Cache on one site and I noticed that the rotating ads also cache. Your advertisers might complain.
Surbhi December 2, 2009 - 4:39 am
It was an informative post. I didn't know that speed is going to be one of the parameters of Google Ranking in 2010. Sounds good. Your tips are going to be really useful.
tommy December 2, 2009 - 7:55 am
Yes, it is very important, Google has applied this silently but only officially announced by Matt, thanks for sharing
Secure Web Hosting Services December 3, 2009 - 6:19 am
site speed calculation is important phenomena while ranking the site
custom essay December 3, 2009 - 7:17 am
I agree that their interest is in the content of the site, but I think people also want that content to load quickly. I think if two sites are relevant to my search and one of them is quicker than the other one, I would prefer the quick one.
game-girl December 4, 2009 - 10:12 pm
Thanks for drawing attention to this problem.I have never thought of it being so important myself. .-= game-girl´s last blog ..Сталкер Зов Припяти прохождение игры (STALKER S.T.A.L.K.E.R) =-.
Writing a Will December 5, 2009 - 10:52 am
Thanks for the really important information here. The thing is that a lot of people will not give this any of their time so there will be opportunity to take advantage and get better rankings if you go to the effort of making sure your site loads quickly. Regards, John
Mike Portson December 7, 2009 - 2:09 am
Changes, changes, changes. Everything changes in Google recently and sometimes I have a problem to cope with all those changes. To be honest - I think that too many changes can do more harm than help. There are many people who try to keep their site as high as it is possible on results ladder, but with to deep changes many of them could suffer huge loss.
kitchen taps December 7, 2009 - 5:44 am
It can be very beneficial if site speed can become a major factor for ranking.
Essay Writing December 9, 2009 - 3:42 pm
Using Google webmaster tool is the answer of all questions. It will tune up your website for the best ranking.
Mike Standing@Banner Design December 10, 2009 - 8:52 am
When you check out the codes sheets of many websites and find them loaded with too many scripts and elements, no wonder they could have negative impacts over the websites rankings and Google has found the speed of the pages an effective measure in evaluating their ranks after all.
freddie December 10, 2009 - 10:12 pm
CDN's definately help but they don't help with the data transfer between server and browser (where 80% of page load occurs). We went the cdn route and ended up needing to add a website accelerator (aptimize WAX) and that made a big difference so i'm not sure what would happen if we cut out the cdn all together....
rohn smith December 15, 2009 - 2:57 am
Web master tools is always use full not just google ,yahoo and msn are also providing this kind of tools.in web master tools you actually see how google,yahoo or msn moniter your site and actual back-links.
Dwippy@DoFollow Blog List December 15, 2009 - 9:56 am
I am so glad they are doing this. I really dislike wandering into what looks to be an interesting site and have to sit there while the page loads a picture at a time. .-= Dwippy@DoFollow Blog List´s last blog ..Get Links with DoFollow Blogs =-.
Guildford December 16, 2009 - 3:02 am
Thanks for the tips of 2010. All webmasters need to take that into consideration to optimised their pages, images and whatever possible to make page size less in weight.
Mma Pound For Pound December 24, 2009 - 11:45 am
yes right, the speed of the website is a very important role in search engine rankings, so use a light theme, which can facilitate the search engine bots find your article .-= Mma Pound For Pound´s last blog ..MMA pound for pound team =-.
sarah@Florida dui attorney December 30, 2009 - 8:43 pm
I also use the Thesis theme and wordpress super cache plug-in, and if this is true that in 2010 web pages will get a boost for fast loading time, then I should be in good shape, the new page rank update just happened so maybe this change was just implemented also. :) .-= sarah@Florida dui attorney´s last blog ..All About Florida Ignition Interlock Devices =-.
Lida February 1, 2010 - 12:39 pm
Its mean we have to move our sites to good hosting servers if we have to care about speed... :)))) .-= Lida´s last blog ..Kalori Hesaplama ve Lida =-.
Promotional Products Australia May 23, 2010 - 6:05 pm
Although site speed is a so-called factor in 2010, internet speeds are getting faster and faster, so if it is an issue now, in a year or so it wont be anymore. As long as your site is not full of flash and is xhtml you are all good to rank well.
sang August 10, 2010 - 5:40 am
My site runs very slow. Maybe I should upgrade it to

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