Faster Loading Website Linked To Increased Conversions

It’s one of those issues that affect everyone using the web, you’ve probably cursed it when it wasn’t present, but only in recent times have SEO eyes have been focused on page speed. What many people don't realise is that it can have a direct impact on your business, as Google’s Maile Ohye has said, one company testing sites optimised and unoptimised for speed found a 16% increase in conversions.

It’s set to be a new metric for rating sites when Google’s much talked about ‘Caffeine’ infrastructure is rolled out, but what does this mean for sites currently?

As with all SEO techniques, its best to first consider how this will effect the users of your site. All the SEO techniques in the world will not help you if you compromise your sites usability in the process. In this case however, it is really in the user’s interest to have the pages load as fast as possible.

PageSpeed and Firebug

Speed In Practice

One method to increase the load speed is to look at the order with which your page loads its resources. You really want to load your style sheets at the top of the page, while leaving any scripts you need to the bottom of your page.

One useful tool to test your sites speed is incorporated into Webmaster tools, it will tell you how your site compares to others in your industry.

Another great tool is Page Speed, the open source plug-in for Firefox / SeaMonkey. This will actually analyse the page and make suggestions on how to speed it up. You will need to have the excellent Firebug plugin installed as well.

Also, if you are looking for an online speed testing solution then Pingdom Tools has a free service allowing you to analyse page speed.

With all this attention being placed on speed it is easy to get carried away with ideas of its potential importance. A page which loads extremely quickly will not shoot to the top of the rankings simply for that reason, but it’s fair to at least evaluate it and have that information available to a search engine, after all, search engine users being forwarded to a very slow page are more likely to be frustrated. The search engine wants to provide the best service and experience for their users, speed is just one factor, it’s not the whole story.

There is a WebProNews video where Google’s Maile Ohye talks page speed and techniques to improve it:

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