Google has recently announced a shiny new tool webmasters and website owners can now use to help their SEO efforts in conjunction with pleasing Google’s site speed factors. Under Google Labs they have released a fun new tool where you can test how quick your site is in regards to page load time. Page load time first made waves a few years ago when Google announced it would be an important ranking factor in the very near future. Since then websites have scrambled around in order to clean up their coding, images and overall structure to allow pages to load as efficiently as possible.
“At Google, we’re striving to make the whole web fast. As part of that effort, we’re launching a new web-based tool in Google Labs, Page Speed Online, which analyzes the performance of web pages and gives specific suggestions for making them faster. Page Speed Online is available from any browser, at any time. This allows website owners to get immediate access to Page Speed performance suggestions so they can make their pages faster.”
How To Optimize Your Page Load Time
There are numerous ways you can speed up your websites load time. Unfortunately if you are not a very technical person decreasing your page load time can leave you scratching your head. Once you identify the most obvious areas to address you will have to dig deep into the coding and server location of your website.
- Optimize your images
- Reduce http requests
- Use validated code
- Put style sheets at the top of the page in the header
- Reduce the amount of scripts being used
- Decrease the amount of java script being used
- Avoid using redirects
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
“In addition, we’ve added a new feature: the ability to get Page Speed suggestions customized for the mobile version of a page, specifically smartphones. Due to the relatively limited CPU capabilities of mobile devices, the high round-trip times of mobile networks, and rapid growth of mobile usage, understanding and optimizing for mobile performance is even more critical than for the desktop, so Page Speed Online now allows you to easily analyze and optimize your site for mobile performance. The mobile recommendations are tuned for the unique characteristics of mobile devices, and contain several best practices that go beyond the recommendations for desktop browsers, in order to create a faster mobile experience.”
Google Page Speed Video
A little while ago Google dropped a bombshell on the website community announcing that page load time would start to be considered when it comes how well a website along with all of its pages ranks in the search engines. KISSmetrics recently put together a great infographics piece on just how much your revenue stream can be impacted with a slow loading site. Believe it or not a slow loading website can cause significant abandonment on a website when it comes to how much visitors will tolerate. With more and more of society being conditioned to want quickness and speed if your homepage is anchored down with too much “junk” and it takes just a bit too long to render you could be shooting yourself in the foot. Page load time applies to all of your website pages not just your home page but if you are top heavy and most of your visitors are coming through the home page you might want to explore the loading issue, if you have one.
