ClarityWEB Article
Website ranking, SEO and the importance of website response speed
Whilst every decent web design company and SEO expert has known this is important for a long time now, Google has formally acknowledged the importance of website response speed in terms of page ranking.
The speed at which a website page loads is a critical factor in user experience. If it takes too long, users become frustrated and simply go elsewhere. If you have choosen a poor or cheap web host you could be penalising your position on Google without even being aware of it.
However, Google has now gone to the lengths of announcing that it includes site speed as part of the algorithm it uses to rank sites. So, it is now official. If our site is slow, unreliable or heavy in content - you are going to a pay a price much greater than anything you might save on web hosting or cheaper, less efficient, web design.
Google says that internal studies have shown faster websites not only mean happier visitors but that they also result in reduced operating costs for site owners.
So, if you have to wait a little longer than you would like for your site to load - you can be assured you will be suffering with page rank penalties too.
Spread the Word
How important is it?
Well, it is important. However, it still is not anything like as important as ensuring that content on your page is relevant to what you do.
Google considers so many factors that it has to weight each one. Site speed is going to be an important one, but if a user visits your website and finds content that is not relevant to what they wanted then you are going to suffer more than you would be having a slow site.
The truth is that Google has simply formalised something that is important to the online experience and should make site owners think twice. Choosing a cheap web hosting solution has always been false economy but being told that you will be ranked further down the pages than you would have been with a decent host and efficient website makes a lot of difference.
If your site is slow - act now.
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