Copyright © 2012 Insurance Marketing HQ. All Rights Reserved. Snowblind by Themes by bavotasan.com. Powered by WordPress.
It is becoming ever apparent that Google is striving to improve the user experience on the web through a focus on page speed (how long it takes a page to load). They’ve recently launched a new tool in Google Analytics that will allow you to track a sample of page views in relation to page loading speed. Google has factored page speed into their search engine algorithm on a small scale already, but this new tool suggests that they will be placing more weight on this issue moving forward.
The Perks
Being able to track your load speed will help open several doors in terms of analyzing data related to your website:
• It will allow you to determine a concrete correlation between load speed and conversion rates.
• You can identify which landing pages have the slowest loading times – thereby pinpointing areas for improvement.
• You can determine if there is a trend between load speed and either types of visitors or geographic locations.
• You’ll be able to establish whether factors such as browser, operating system or screen resolution affect your analytics metrics.
What site speed means to SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, so having a website that allows viewers to browse pages quickly is definitely an optimizer. Google ran some tests to determine whether speed matters and found that by making people wait mere milliseconds longer than usual for a page to load caused them to conduct fewer searches. With this in mind, you want to make sure your company’s website is loading at an efficient pace. Think about it, if viewers have proven that they will abandon a search if the load speed is less than speedy, that means your site has less of a chance for conversions.
Tips for Improving Site Speed
Now that you know how important site speed is, here are some tips for improving the speed of your website:
• Have your web developer simplify the CSS code listed on your live site (remove any excess coding)
• Avoid excessive page redirects
• Use a caching system
• Compress javascript
• Utilize CSS in place of images for effects such as buttons or gradients when possible
The suggestions can become increasingly technical, but overall you want to make sure your website isn’t wasting juice trying to load unnecessary site elements. Keep it simple. Not only will simplicity allow your pages to load faster, but having a simplified site will make it easier for visitors to navigate through your pages. You always need to be thinking about the customer and how to make their experience on your website as seamless as possible.
Being able to track loading speed from start to finish is another win for both Google and the SEO world! At Astonish Results we run all of our sites off a state of the art platform and we are always looking for ways to keep up with the latest and greatest developer trends. We are all about making our clients’ sites run as efficiently as possible, so we are excited about the roll-out of this new Google tool!
