In SEO, Your Site’s Download Speed Matters to Google

 

April 12, 2010

How fast does your Web site download? Google recently announced that it determines site rankings, in part, by download speed.

“We mentioned site speed as early as last year, and you can watch this video from February where I pointed out that we still put much more weight on factors like relevance, topicality, reputation, value-add, etc. — all the factors that you probably think about all the time,” wrote Google software engineer  Matt Cutts in a recent blog.

“Compared to those signals, site speed will carry much less weight,” he added.

But another blog, Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, also mentioned site speed: “But faster sites don’t just improve user experience, recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.”

Personally, I wonder if being fast qualifies as a green initiative.

The official Google also makes these suggestions:

• Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
• YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
• WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
• In Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world as in the chart below. We’ve also blogged about site performance.

Mr. Cutts also wrote that Google’s official blog provides even more tools.

“…Google’s webmaster console provides information very close to the information that we’re actually using in our ranking,” he added. “In addition, various free-to-use tools offer things like in-depth analysis of individual pages. Google also provides an entire speed-related mini-site with tons of resources and videos about speeding up websites.”

He also says “big sites” will not get a competitive advantage in the added factor of site speed.

“Often even a little bit of work can make big differences for site speed,” explained Mr. Cutts. “So I think the average smaller web site can really benefit from this change, because a smaller website can often implement the best practices that speed up a site more easily than a larger organization that might move slower or be hindered by bureaucracy.”

In addition to downplaying load speed, he emphasized Internet users would appreciate the fastest-possible user experience.

“…this change highlights that there are very constructive things that can directly improve your website’s user experience,” he concluded.” Instead of wasting time on keyword meta tags, you can focus on some very easy, straightforward, small steps that can really improve how users perceive your site.”

My sense is that site speed does indeed play a vital role in search engine optimization. If you haven’t already, you might want to make certain that your site downloads fast as possible.

From the Coach’s Corner, for more tips on ranking well on Google, here’s another Biz Coach column: “Achieving Strong Results on Google Now Easier with Social Networking.”

Achieving Strong Results on Google Now Easier with Social Networking

 

As a business-coaching columnist, I enjoy doing a lot of reading. My email is filled with tons of material every day on topics ranging from finance to technology. Sometimes, it’s hard to stay abreast of it, but it’s enjoyable.

One of my favorites to at least scan is Website Magazine. They are up-to-date on their information.

An article on how to succeed on Google by Dante Monteverde, known as the SEO Corner Columnist, is really informative and reassuring to Web site entrepreneurs.

Most Web site owners have had to work hard at mastering Google in organic search or search engine optimization (SEO). That’s true for me. Compared to Bing, Google has been quirky to say the least.

But with social media optimization (SMO), it’s getting a lot easier on Google. It’s easier on Bing and the others because of SMO.

If you’re a little late to the party, this means Google’s blended search process includes social content with the organic elements, such as images, news and videos. That’s a much easier process for most of us.

Here’s the link to the article: SEO for Google Social Search.

From the Coach’s Corner, are you or anybody you know thinking about entrepreneurship?

If so, the long road to becoming a good entrepreneur is a difficult undertaking.

To see if you’re cut out to be your own boss, take an aptitude-entrepreneurial test. 

P.S. If you’re a regular use of this Web site, you might have noticed this column is much shorter than usual…I’m taking a partial day off. We’ll chat with you soon.

Of Interest to Web Publishers, Videos Continue Surge in Popularity

 

Updated June 30, 2010

Including advertisements, here are the results of studies regarding online video viewing and usage:

Short-form Videos – Website Magazine reports Metacafe commissioned a study by Frank N. Magid Associates, which shows 80 percent of consumers prefer short-form videos. That includes movie previews, music videos and television shows.

But it represents bad news for video producers. Twenty-five percent of respondents enjoy short videos more than the actual TV shows.

Fifty-five percent of Web viewers enjoy video advertisements as much or more than on TV. That’s a 3 percent increase over 2009 results.

In demographics, online videos are most-popular with 18 to 24 year-olds. Eighty-five percent of males watch Internet videos each week – a 15 percent increase over 2009. Sixty-eight percent of females count it as a weekly routine – 27 percent higher than last year.

Conclusions about short-form videos: Keep them short and break up long videos into short segments. Make them professional. Ads, before or after your videos, are OK.

Display Ads by Format – Probably most interesting to publishers is that comScore released its study, also according to Website Magazine. comScore’s May 2010 report, shows online ad-format preferences in the United States. The No. 1 preference is JPEG display ads – 42.4 percent of impressions. Flash and rich-media ads total 40.3 percent of impressions.

Display Ads by Size – comScore also reports Leaderboard ads (728 x 90) were No. 1, preferred by 23.1 percent of respondents.

Rectangles were most-enjoyed by 23.1 percent, which were followed by medium rectangles (300 x 250) at 18.3 percent, and buttons (120 x 90) at 14.7 percent.

Note: Popup and popup under ads had less than 1 percent of the impressions.

So, if you’re a Web publisher, videos are an increasingly important indicator of your relevance to Internet users.

Videos continue to be the online rage as 33.2 billion were viewed online by 178 million in America in December, 2009, according to research firm, comScore.

comScore says the Google sites were the most popular with 13.2 billion videos for a 39.8 percent market share, thanks to YouTube. It garnered 99 percent of Google’s viewers.

Here are the other rankings of viewed videos:

 ·         No. 2 Hulu -1 billion – 3 percent

·         No.3 Microsoft – 561 million – 1.7 percent

·         No. 4 Fox Interactive Media – 550.5 million – 1.7 percent

·         No. 5 Yahoo – 539.4 million – 1.6 percent

·         No. 6 Viacom Digital – 372.6 million – 1.1 percent

·         No.7 Turner Network – 366.9 million – 1.1 percent

·         No. 8 CBS Interactive – 297.2 million – .9 percent

·         No. 9 Megavideo.com – 210.2 million – .6 percent

·         No. 10 AOL – 209.9 million – .6 percent

This also means the 178 million viewers each saw an average of 187 videos.

In view of these numbers, it isn’t surprising that Google had the most unique viewers with 135.8 million. That’s 97.5 videos per person.

From the Coach’s Corner, here’s a valuable source of information in search engine optimization:

Thanks to a tip from Web Pro News, a video featuring Google’s Matt Cutts explains the problems/solutions of stale links on your site, Watch Video Here.