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It’s official – site speed affects rankings

Sunday, June 13th, 2010

SEO experts have suspected for a few years now that the speed of a site has some effect on its rankings. It’s only logical. Google and the other search engines have made it clear that they favour sites that are pleasing to internet users. This would naturally include sites that download swiftly and operate without error. What hasn’t been certain is exactly how this could affect a site’s ranking.

Things have become slightly clearer now that Google has announced on their Official Google Webmaster Central Blog that site speed is definitely being taken into account in rankings calculations. The company made the announcement in their blog on April 9, 2010, stating that as a further step toward a speedy net, the search engine would now include site speed as a new signal in the algorithm.

The search engine is being a little disingenuous in making this announcement, as it is clear that speed has been an important factor in the search algorithms for some time. Although it’s true that it was never cut and dry, that a speedy site was guaranteed a higher ranking than a slow one, search engine optimisation professionals did notice that clients experienced better rankings if they made their sites faster.

Let’s face it, a speedy site was always going to do better with the search engines because speed is only the outward sign of a site’s overall function. SEO companies have been doing their best to speed up client sites since almost the start of SEO, because a streamlined site is one which a search engine spider can crawl more effectively. An efficiently performing site is also one that is less likely to lose users after they click through.

The Google post noted some online tools that site owners can make use of when they have a need for speed. There are some really good free tools around that you can use to check the performance of your web pages, and some of them offer suggestions of areas that could do with some improvement. Many of the more popular browsers, and even Google and Yahoo! themselves, have add-ons that you can use to evaluate site performance. Shop around to see which one suits your needs, or talk to a professional if you’re uncertain.

If you’re consulting an SEO firm to perform your site’s optimisation, analysis of your site’s performance should make up part of your SEO campaign. You can discuss this aspect of SEO with us at SEO Consult Australia.

Google was careful to note that the introduction of the speed factor would not have a massive effect on sites across the board, and urged site owners not to drop relevant content in favour of speed. The company noted that it expected the change to only affect around one percent of queries for the moment. This may be true, but having a slow site is not going to be of benefit to any site owner. Checking your site speed should be a part of your SEO plan.

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How to Map Out User Paths

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

If you want to keep your bounce rate down, it’s vital to set out the right user paths on your site. Your SEO work might be successful in increasing search traffic to your site, but if you can’t give your site users what you want, then the entire process is wasted.

Internal paths through your site are a big part of search engine optimisation. Not only are clear paths essential if you want search engine spiders to find the right pages within your site, the amount of time users spend on your site is now being taken into account in rankings calculations. This means that if you don’t manage to give users what they want, your place in the search engine listings will take a dive.

The most logical way forward is to map out paths through your site which will allow users for each search query to get what they want. In doing this, you’re laying down paths that will lead the search engines to the most relevant information on your site for each keyword as well. Here are the steps you need to take:

Determine what your user is there for. This will take some time – hopefully. It is hopefully, because a site with many user groups has a greater chance of success than a site with only one user group. Your site should appeal to a number of groups of people, each of which will need a path mapped out for them.

Figuring out what those groups are and what they need is not a simple matter, and consulting a search engine optimisation professional may be a big help. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia. If you’ve already engaged in some form of internet marketing, you may already have conducted research to discover your user groups. If not, and if a professional isn’t going to be on hand, you need to do some research of your own.

Every site has its own unique user groups, but essentially they will fall into two general categories: users who are looking for information and users who are looking to purchase. Out of these two categories will then come smaller groups, as you sort out what they are looking for and what purchase is required. From there, you have an idea of what they need from your site.
Refine the needs of each group into individual goals. Once you have these goals, you can sort out which of your pages addresses that goal and start to plot out a path. For example, someone looking for puppy health tips on a pet site will be happy to follow the path ‘home> dogs> puppies> health> puppy food’. As you see, your paths can direct users to your business goal as well.
Lay a trail of clues that allows them to reach their goal. The last thing you need to do is ensure that your users can see the paths laid out for them. Here, keywords come into play once more. Use them to direct attention.