Improving your website's load speed & usability
By Sean Rosensteel
HTF Columnist
In 2010, Google will be launching a new search engine algorithm to perform its search and display its results. This is known as “Google Caffeine” because the speed in which it will search and display results will be almost 50% faster than it currently is.
With these changes, Google will be placing higher importance on the speed of your website. Website’s that perform well and load quickly will have a better placement in their search engines than the ones that are slow to upload. This makes sense, as Google’s main goal is to provide its users with the best possible search experience – and results – at all times.
To test your website’s speed, you can download the Firebug plugin available for the Mozilla Firefox browser. This can be downloaded at http://getfirebug.com/. In the event you need Mozilla Firefox to browse the web, it can be found at http://www.mozilla.com.
Once installed, you can run a page speed test on your (or any) website. Typically, scores of 70/100 or better are very good. In the event that your site is slower than expected, a quick-fix would be to compress some of your images so they take less memory – and ultimately less time to load.
Your website should be optimized for speed regardless of whether Google is going to place higher importance on this factor when the new search engine is rolled out. Maximizing the usability of your website is healthy for the visitor and consumer, as well. The last time you visited a website that took forever to load, did you stay or simply press the “back” button in your browser?
Sean Rosensteel is the founder of Savvy Pro Web in Eden Prairie, MN. He specializes in search engine optimization, social media, and conversions. www.savvyproweb.com.
