There have been a lot of rumours recently that Google’s new algorithm may factor into its calculation to determine how fast your website loads for visitors. Short and simple; if your website is slow, your rankings are affected.
To ensure this doesn’t happen on your website, there are some things you can do yourself if you’re technically savvy… otherwise your website developer and host may also be able to assist.
Website Hosting
The first and most obvious factor is who you are hosting your website with. If your website is lean, mean and small in size, but your hosting company is overloaded, out-of-date, and has poor up time, then you should really consider changing hosts. Even without considering the ranking effects of a slow site, if the Google crawlers can’t get to your site because it is often down (yes, even at 2:00 am), then you’re not doing yourself any favours.
Enable Compression On Your Website
Using GZIP compression will (typically) improve site speed by delivering a smaller amount of data to the end user. Essentially when a visitor asks to view a page on your website, the server will compress that page, send the smaller amount of data to the visitor, then decompress it on the visitor’s computer. This video by Google helps explain the process:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjab_aZsdxw.
Remove CSS That Isn’t Used On a Page
Unnecessary CSS simply adds extra data to your pages while providing no real value. Ideally you will have one global style sheet and each page will have its own style sheet if necessary.
Use AJAX Libraries Hosted by Google
The Google AJAX Libraries API is a network of the most popular JavaScript libraries. By using them, your website can benefit from fast access to these globally available scripts: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/.
Check Your Website Speed
Google Webmaster Tools provides a tool for checking your site speed, and it is well worth viewing on a regular basis. There is also a Firefox add-on that works with the Firebug add-on to help you evaluate your website’s performance.
Learn More
You’ll find more information on this subject here: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/. Alternatively, if you would like to know more about the subject, give us a call. We’re here to help.
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