May 18th, 2010 by Nick

Ask any professional who provides web design or search engine optimisation services, and they will tell you how crucial it is to have fast loading web pages within your website. Page speed is important on many different levels, from ranking within search engine results pages (SERPs) to ease of use and efficiency for visitors, and with many websites treating page speed as a crucial part of their web marketing, if you’re not fast – you’re last.

In terms of page speed from a search engine point of view, a speedier website will rank higher as the site will be used more efficiently by searchers. At present not all search engines take actual page loading speed into consideration when ranking a page, however some of the major engines are looking into doing this, and there are other factors which a search engine will pick up on that will possibly reduce the speed of your page load.

A vast amount of the searches conducted via search engines are based around finding local information. If you have a national or even international website which offers regional services, then there may be a delay in loading a local page from the search engine. The way in which a search engine will recognise this is through your sites IP address, so if you do find that local searches are resulting in a slower page speed then it may be worth considering separate websites for any regional offerings.

In terms of the personal user, page speed is crucial. Although broadband internet is more widespread, the average person may not have a particular high speed internet connection so if your website is aimed at the personal home user then ensure your website caters for them. There are various ways you can prevent very slow page loading and most is to do with the content of your site.

Images, videos and any other large files can clog up a website and make loading slower. If you do need to include images, only include high resolution ones if necessary and use thumbnails where possible. If you do need to include some large files then give people the option to download them as opposed to the page just loading them automatically.

Keep on top of your links at all times. When you are looking at link building strategies do not just focus on the new links, consider any old or dormant links that may be causing a backlog unnecessarily. This also applies to any databases or tags surrounding your website and having a maintenance system in place can work wonders.

People expect a lot more now and users will simply not accept a slow loading page. Rather than wait they are more inclined to just give it up as a bad job and look elsewhere. Most advice will tell you a page should load in fifteen seconds, however there are claims that the average user gets bored after a mere four seconds, which if true, confirms that speed really is everything.

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