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Google Caffeine

Many SEO sites have been reporting that web page load times could potentially effect rankings in the future, including SEO Lair.  This news come out of various interviews with Matt Cutts from Pubcon Las Vegas.  While most SEO news hubs are going conservative and saying web page load times “might” or “potentially could” effect rankings, I’m just going to come out and say it will be included in the Google Algorithm some time in the future.  I’m saying this for multiple reasons.  The main rational is that Google and all the other search engines try to deliver two key things:  relevant results and a good user experience.  That being said, the user experience is devalued if Google sends users to web page that load slower than the user wants.  Google has also paved the way for implementing this in their US Patent Application #20050071741.  Check out my post about SEO news from pubcon for more details on this.

So we know that webpage load times will be important but how can you tweak your site for better performance?  There are a few excellent resources out there to answer this question:

• The first is the web performance best practices document from Google.  This guide provides information how to optimize your cache, miminize round trip times, mimimize request times, minimize payload times, optimizing browser rendering, and more.
• The second place to look for information on reducing webpage load times are a set of two tools from Google.  The Page Speed Tool will conduct a series of tests on your site based on best practices.  In addition the tool will assign scores for each page and give helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.
• The next tool is called Closure.  This nifty tool with take Java script code and compress it.  This tool not only removes dead code and optimizes the remaining code, but it checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript downfalls.
• The final resource I suggest using is the SEO Site Checkup tool.  The SEO Site Checkup tool reviews most elementary on-page issues but also, more importantly, checks site performance metrics.  These include the use of inline styles and Java script, nested tables, page caching, page compression, CSS images, Java script sizes, and more.

Using the tools referenced above you can increase your webpage load time.  It is important to start thinking about ways to make your site faster today.  You don’t want to be caught off guard when Google announces it as an influential factor and all your competitors already have fast loading sites.  This is an even bigger concern for E-commerce sites.

Have an opinion about this post?  Think webpage load times won’t effect rankings in the future?  Post a comment and share your thoughts!

Related posts:

1. Ways To Reduce Your Web Page Load Time
2. Key SEO News From Pubcon Las Vegas
3. Google’s Twitter Algorithm
4. Showing Success Outside Of Core SEO Metrics
5. Google Real Time Search Revealed