SEO Experts Tips

After Google started using website speed as a parameter in their ranking algorithms every webmaster has a good reason to keep an eye on the page load speed of their website. Google’s bending over backwards to spread the word about this new speed penalty is proof in itself since big G is usually very secretive about pending algorithm changes.

From the announcement we learn that the speed penalty was introduced following experiments by Google that revealed the impact website speed has on Internet users.

But the results of the experiment come as no surprise even for someone that has started to use the Internet recently; users prefer websites that load faster and tend to spend more time on such websites.

However, the search engine giant has been careful to state that even though website speed is now a factor, it is not the primary parameter for determining results. The quality and relevance of information is still the determining factor, but if your website speed is slow, you will receive a Google penalty.

This implies that it is important for you as a webmaster start to assess the speed of your website to determine whether you are moving further down the search engine results pages (SERPs) because your website is slower than your direct competitors.

How Can Google Know Your Page Speed?

It is vital that you understand the basics of how Google’s algorithm determines your website speed and thus your SERP ranking. The search engine uses two main factors when it comes to speed assessment.

First, your website will receive a higher speed ranking if it responds faster to Googlebot, the crawler program Google uses to find and index websites.

Second, your website will also receive a good speed ranking if it records a faster loading time on Google Toolbar than your competition. To better assist you in analyzing your website speed, Google has added a page speed report to their webmaster tools found within the Google webmasters ‘lab’ section.

The tool and the reports can be used to compare your website’s page load times to that of other websites. Once you are armed with the information of where your page ranks in the speed hierarchy, you can start to make the necessary code and structure changes to make it respond faster.

Your first priority should be to make sure you have no SLOW pages on your site. Pages that take two seconds or more to load and pages that are marked as SLOW in Google Webmaster Tools need to be improved to avoid a Google penalty for website speed.

When you have no slow pages left, try to make all your pages load in less than a second. Read on to see why this is important.

Having a website that loads quickly has more benefits than just higher search engine ranking and avoiding a Google penalty.

A website optimized for speed reduces the bandwidth required on your hosting service, thus reducing your overall hosting costs.

Faster websites also provide a better browsing experience because users are able to get information faster and navigate through your website more easily.

In addition, websites optimized for speed work better when accessed on mobile phones, PDAs and other devices that do not have the same level of processing memory as your standard laptop or desktop computer.

Even though you can have a mobile variant of your website which is trimmed down, some users will want to view your site in full HTML on their phone or PDA and a faster loading website will have a better chance of successfully loading on such devices.

As a webmaster, there are a number of free tools that you can use to improve the loading speed of your website. I have listed three of the more popular ones below:

Page Speed

Page Speed is an open-source add-on for the Mozilla Firefox browser. It evaluates the speed of your website and gives you suggestions on how to improve your website speed.

Page Speed runs tests on the architectural configuration of both your web server and your website’s front end code. After running these tests, it gives you a report on your website speed and suggestions on how to improve the speed of your website.

Yslow

Yslow is a free Firefox add-on from Yahoo integrated with Firebug software for website development. It displays statistics, an evaluation report and also provides suggestions on how best to improve the speed of your website using best practices.

Yslow comes integrated with other tools for performance evaluation, including Smush. Use it and JSLint to further enhance your website performance. Yslow is a Yahoo product but is still useful for avoiding the Google speed penalty.

SSEL Speed Tools

There is also a website speed check at Secret Search Engine Labs where you can get a quick answer on how big your webpage is and how fast it loads.

The Website Speed Quick Fix

There are several factors that affect page load speeds on your website, many of them technical and best solved by your webmaster or developer, but some changes you can do yourself as long as you have some experience with HTML and creating web pages.

Reduce the number, size and quality of images and use less audio, flash and Javascript. Reduce the length of the page by splitting a long page into several short pages. Strip the source code of redundant HTML, Javascript and CSS code that just slows things down. Don’t use images and other components that are linked live from other domains; instead use a copy on your server.

And don’t forget to keep your eyes on Google Webmaster Tools to see how your site performs compared to the competition.

By Aaron Steinheinkel

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As you sit down to write a blog you need to ask yourself – who is going to be reading this and how can I help them? As I have mentioned in several of my blog posts the trick is not to create something with the intent to “make” it go viral. The trick is to create a blog that contains valuable information and is well written and then it will go viral. This same principle applies when looking to add to your readers’ interaction. Interaction increases continued readership.

Target Your Audience

I have a good friend who owns a helicopter flight school and when he sits down to blog he is communicating to an entirely different audience than you or I may be intending to communicate with.

With this in mind make sure that you are targeting the correct audience. If your blog is geared toward an audience looking for information on kite building, you won’t want to write a post that directs most of its attention to model airplane building. You may want to write a blog comparing the similarities and differences between the two, but the main goal of the blog post should be appealing to your readers’ main interests.

You may want to write down some questions that you would be interested to know the answers to if you were new to the niche which you are blogging in and answer those in a blog post or two. Make sure that your blog posts do not wander from the main subject. The more on target your posts are, the more likely your readers are to return to your blog and share it with others they know. Blogs are meant to be dedicated to one subject such as professional networking, vintage car restoration or triathlon training.

I would like to leave you with one last thought when targeting your audience in your blog posts. It is a good idea to re-read your blog posts from the perspective of a reader while in the editing process. Make sure that it captures your attention. You want to be sure to give complete thoughts in your writing. Give your readers some food for thought to spark their own ideas and comments on your blog.

Give Them Your Best Information

Your reader needs to be motivated to be engaged with your blog post. After reading your blog post the visitor should have the desire to comment and share your blog. Why? Because it had valuable information. It was not a sales pitch and it was well written. I am an advocate of giving some of your best content away for nothing. If you have captured your readers’ attention and have given them some quality information, they are much more likely to share your content.

Have you discovered something incredible in your niche lately? Your reader will probably want to know about this information as well. Consider what you would want to get out of reading a blog and make sure that those goals are met in your writing. If you are giving great information in your blogs, your readers will literally beg for more. Getting your readers to ask you for more is the goal of writing in the first place and a validation that you are writing something that they want to read and are actively seeking.

I recently read a blog from Brian Solis called 21 Rules of Engagement. It was a summary of part of his new book, Engage. Not only did I feel like I was getting quality information and a great preview of his book, but it also made me want to go out and purchase his book immediately. I thought that this information he was giving away for nothing was already valuable so I should go and find what else he has to offír. This is an excellent strategy and very effective to create continued readership whether the future readings are free or not.

Do Something About It

At the end of each blog post use a call to action. Ask your readers to comment on what they think about the specific topic. You can even reward them for doing so. For example another buddy of mine posted on Facebook that whoever commented on a blog post he had just posted on his MyMark profile page would get a fríe copy of his e-book. I am sure he had people read his blog that normally may not have, but with this kind of reward they took the time. The blog needs to be good enough that they are happy they spent the time reading it; if this happens they will come back again and again. Even without a specific reward being offered, the reward has now become the quality information you are giving them.

One of the most valuable parts of a blog is the comment section. Usually if one person has a question so do many others. This is a great place for readers to ask questions, answer questions and provide their own tips and tricks that you may not have had time to cover in your blog. You should be asking or telling your readers to leave their comments and make sure that the call to action invites more than just, “great blog.” It’s nice to be validated, but it’s more important to provide readers with further information.

Finally, when leaving a call to action make sure that you act on it as well. If you told your readers to go find something new to learn and write about it in the comments make sure that you are doing this as well. Make sure that you are responding to comments and not just reading them. Continue the interaction in your comment section so that your readers will feel like you are offering two-way communication rather than just talking at them. Any webinar presenter will tell you that one of the most valuable parts of every webinar is the questions and comments part at the end of the webinar. Don’t skip this step. It will likely ensure your success as a blogger and a brand builder.

By Bradley Hess

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