SEO Experts Tips

Last week’s post about load speeds on Google’s Official Webmaster Central Blog finally confirmed the rumors which have abounded across the SEO sector for months – that Google now factors a site’s load-speed when assessing its search ranking.

And while this announcement, which comes as no surprise to those with their finger on the Google pulse, has drawn a few favorable responses from blog commenters, the overwhelming majority of readers have expressed concerns and doubts about the soundness of Google’s approach. At the forefront of these were questions primarily regarding the exact magnitude of any negative ranking impact carried by slow page loading speeds. Alongside these came a large number of complaints about the fact that Google’s own Analytics script is a known load-time decelerator, and about the almost glacially slow rendering times of AdSense code.

When read together, many comments give one the impression that webmasters are becoming apprehensive to the point of stampeding, as is usually the case when Google does something new. Indeed, the overall consensus seems to be that load-speeds are about to become the ultimate criterion for search ranking performance, and that this will cause major ranking damage to the average website. One commenter even went so far as to announce that he/she will drop all Analytics and AdSense scripts because their slow performance will now obviously ruin his/her website’s performance.

But are these worries actually valid, or are they just the latest manifestation of unfounded Google-noia to hit the SEO sector?

Before I get around to addressing the question, I must admit that I knew this was coming some time ago. Consequently I was able to line up a few experiments on two sites from my own stable in an effort to gauge any real-term ranking impact once Google started to implement its changes.

What did I personally find?
Despite the fact that both websites are rich in graphics and content, both have not been updated regularly since late last year, and neither is what you might call a fast loader, I found absolutely no detrimental ranking effects for either site during the past couple of months. In fact, the slower of the two websites (average load-time 5.3 secs) actually experienced noticeable SERP improvements in the past week or so, which makes me wonder if there’s not more to all this than simple load-speeds. That, however, is another story.

Of course mine is only a limited sample, and a far from conclusive one. It is, however, one of many indicators one can find if one looks around. And with that in mind, let’s return to the question at hand. Are webmasters’ fears justified or ill-founded?
As usual, and as I’ve touched on already, each and every time Google does something new, it invariably precipitates a spate of trepidation and panic among the world’s webmaster and SEO crowds. Perfect cases in point include the implementation of the ‘Nofollow’ attribute, and the announcement that buying and selling links for PR was no longer ok, both of which together sparked major outcries throughout the online communities. And from what I’ve seen, the initial knee-jerk reaction that the Site-Speed announcement will certainly spell the end of the Internet as we know it is no different.

But seriously, although load-speeds are now a ranking factor, at least for English-language searches on Google.com, let’s not forget that it’s still just a single one of over two-hundred signals Google uses to assess a site’s rankings. And let’s also remember that Google is first and foremost about delivering relevant results, just as it always has been.

After all, what use is serving results from the fastest sites on the web, if those sites don’t actually contain the information the user is looking for?

Despite the fact that both websites are rich in graphics and content, both have not been updated regularly since late last year, and neither is what you might call a fast loader, I found absolutely no detrimental ranking effects for either site during the past couple of months. In fact, the slower of the two websites (average load-time 5.3 secs) actually experienced noticeable SERP improvements in the past week or so, which makes me wonder if there’s not more to all this than simple load-speeds. That, however, is another story.

Of course mine is only a limited sample, and a far from conclusive one. It is, however, one of many indicators one can find if one looks around. And with that in mind, let’s return to the question at hand. Are webmasters’ fears justified or ill-founded?

As usual, and as I’ve touched on already, each and every time Google does something new, it invariably precipitates a spate of trepidation and panic among the world’s webmaster and SEO crowds. Perfect cases in point include the implementation of the ‘Nofollow’ attribute, and the announcement that buying and selling links for PR was no longer ok, both of which together sparked major outcries throughout the online communities. And from what I’ve seen, the initial knee-jerk reaction that the Site-Speed announcement will certainly spell the end of the Internet as we know it is no different.

But seriously, although load-speeds are now a ranking factor, at least for English-language searches on Google.com, let’s not forget that it’s still just a single one of over two-hundred signals Google uses to assess a site’s rankings. And let’s also remember that Google is first and foremost about delivering relevant results, just as it always has been.

After all, what use is serving results from the fastest sites on the web, if those sites don’t actually contain the information the user is looking for?

In an interview less than two weeks ago, Matt Cutts himself said: “People shouldn’t stress out too much about Site-Speed, and the reason is that we’re always going to care first and foremost about quality. How good is a page for users?” Addressing Site-Speed’s function in assessing SERPs, he also said: “Don’t think it’s going to be the largest of the two-hundred factors.”

As part of my daily involvement in Google’s Webmaster Help Forum, I’ve had an opportuníty to keep track of developments during the past five months or so since the Site-Speed topic was first raised. There, a number of highly enlightening discussions with the forum’s other Top Contributors and Google staff, along with the general speculations of a great many visitors, have provided quite a clear picture of Site-Speed’s role in the overall scheme of things. It is a role which, as is usually the case, focuses on a better user experience.

Let’s face it, it’s no great secret that the average visitor’s attention span is five seconds or less, and that long loading times do tend to make users hit the back button. And that’s exactly where Site-Speed comes in. It wasn’t ever designed to be the ultimate Google ranking factor; it merely provides a little extra fine-tuning by casting the deciding vote in cases where information of identical or similar quality is available on multiple websites and needs to be ranked with a better user experience in mind.

As a last word about load-times I would have to say that there are a large number of reasons to make sure your web pages load in a sensible amount of time. These should, however, be focused on your visitors, not orbiting around your Google-noia.

About The Author/Sasch Mayer

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Don’t overlook your inbound linking strategy as you think about search engine optimization for your site. An inbound link is a hyperlink back to your site from another web site. The one constant and reliable strategy in search engine optimization is that sites with a variety of high quality back-links rank higher in the search engine results pages.

Why are these links to your site important? They can can…

• bring potential customers to your site when they click on the link

• boost the number of visitors to your web site

• dramatically improve your search engine rankings
Even though there are software packages on the market that help automate the linking process, use them sparingly, if at all. The only way to succeed in linking strategies is (aside from creating useful content that will encourage inbound links) by manually creating the links. That’s a hard fact to swallow, given how I like to automate as much of my marketing as I can.

Here are the 10 most important inbound links you must have to your site:

1. Directory Links
Directories are indexes of online sites, typically organized by category. Links back to your site from directories like Yahoo Directory and DMOZ.org are very valuable. DMOZ.org is edited by human editors, and while it’s free, it may take awhile for your site to be added. Getting added to Yahoo’s Directory costs $299/year.

2. Press Releases
If you’re writing press releases, make sure they are optimized for keywords that someone would use to find a business like yours and include links back to your site, as well. Once written, you can have your press release distributed through a service like PRWeb.com, which will create links from high traffic news sites back to your site.

3. Article Directories
Writing and distributing articles through high traffic article directories, like EzineArticles. com, is a great way to get valuable inbound links from a high traffic site. By crafting an effective resource box at the close of your article, you can drive traffic back to your site!

4. Social Bookmarking
Similar to web browser bookmarks, social bookmarking sites store individual pages (bookmarks) online and allows users to tag (with keywords), organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources as well as share them with others. If you bookmark your content on these sites (like Digg.com, Reddit.com, Del.icio.us. com), you get a link from the service. By producing content that your readers love and then bookmark to their friends, the link increases in SEO value.

5. Blog Comments
To find blog posts on which to comment, you can use blog-specific search engines like Google Blog Search. Make sure these are blogs read by your target market, not your colleagues. Brand yourself by always using the same name and remember to link back to your site. Always leave a comment that adds to the conversation that’s happening within the comments.

6. Social Media
Now, Google also indexes your Twitter updates and your social networking profiles. Add that to Web 2.0 hubsites like Scribd or HubPage and you’ve got the option of creating many, many inbound links in a very short period of time.
7. Blog/Podcast Syndication
Submitting the RSS feed of your blog and podcast to syndication services will give you a link back to your site. In some cases, each time you publish a new blog post, the post itself will also get a link.

8. Video Syndication
YouTube is one of the most visited sites online, and the number of sites that syndicate videos is growing each day. These sites often allow you to link to your site either in your video’s description or on your profile page, or both.

9. .EDU and .GOV Links
Search engines place a great deal of credibility in government and education web sites, and the links carry a great deal of weight. Frankly, it isn’t easy to get inbound links from these sites.

10. Internal Links
Remember, if you have more than one web site, or a web site and a blog, be sure and link one to the other. You can do this by linking one article to other related articles, or link to categories or archives of information.

Creating a sound inbound linking strategy is a key component of your search engine optimization efforts. Try a few of the strategies listed above and see how your traffic and rankings grow.
By Donna Gunter

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