Website speed effecting page rank.

[madhatter$]

Does anyone have a good resource or article that explains how the load time of a websites pages changes Page rank?

How big a factor is load time?

At what speed will a website be penalized?

How much will it be penalized?

Can extremely fast websites get a bump?

 

[Downsin]

defiantly effects auto traffic

 

[beazt]

I don't think it affects the "Page Rank", but it certainly is a factor as far as ranking of a webpage in SERP is concerned. Google had even publicly stated this, check out one reliable source here:

http://searchengineland.com/google-now-counts-site-speed-as-ranking-factor-39708

 

[talruum]

I say: BLAH!

Google tell that my ecommerce site load in 15 secs and I'm still ranking good. (And my site load in less than a second).

They are trying to tell everyone to use best practices: use css, compress javascript, minyfy everything, remove all comments, gzip, host your images on cdn, etc. But not everyone need this...

And think about it: if google are saying that almost people doesnt have a "good computer and a good internet connection" to load your website, so them doesnt have "enough money" to buy your stuff either. It's some kind of "balance", dont you think?

 

[madhatter$]

What is auto traffic?

defiantly effects auto traffic

 

[Autumn]

This is how landing page speed affects your Adwords quality score, so it's logical to assume a similar system is in play for the organic results.

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87144
http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93116

 

[edthered]

There are a lot of factors affecting a webpage load time. Your website design is only "ONE" among these factors. Don't take everything Big G says to heart

 

[Chrisss]

Does anyone have a good resource or article that explains how the load time of a websites pages changes Page rank?

It does not affect your PR but it's a factor that G use for SERP's. It was added to their system last year!

 

[madhatter$]

Thanks for the help guys!

 

[flaktrak]

THing that slows my pages down more than anything else is adsense ads!!! 75% of load time is adsense. So eventually sites only pushing fast loading affiliate/cpa ads will rank?? I think google on a scare campaign again. However I do try and make my site load as fast as possible anyway. Users HATE slow sites.

 

[Chrisss]

I think google on a scare campaign again. However I do try and make my site load as fast as possible anyway. Users HATE slow sites.

I hear what you are saying and it's always a good idea to be a bit skeptical related to the information G provide.

But - as you state yourself. Users hate slow sites. So what G want, is to provide users with a pleasant experince, so if 2 websites has the same SEO work done (off page and on page), then will the webpage with the fastest loadtime be a the first spot.

Like a lot of onsite SEO, then don't I think it's a factor that makes a big different. But it all adds up

 

[Autumn]

Indeed, G is all about the user experience. The fact that load speed is a quality score issue with Adwords definitely indicates that they would/will introduce into the organic serps; they also filed a patent about it.

I was reading some stuff about load speed and Adwords, and their definition of "slow" is the geographical average for where your site is hosted + 3 seconds. So I assume something similar applies to the organic results.

I've also read studies where they reported a drop of 10% in traffic for every additional second of wait time (ie people getting sick of waiting and clicking away), so fast load times are also essential just for conversions and making good money out of your clicks, regardless of serp benefits.

 

[ljt3759]

Google has said quite a lot on it, they said they want the internet to be as fast as turning the page in a book, but also said that their algorithm on speed only affects 1% of people. I did a post on it here http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...17072-double-speed-your-website-tutorial.html with how to speed your site up too, it is basically what Talruum said, and Autumm, your right. 7% of people leave your site for every second of waiting time.

 

[thedon23]

Good thread with some valuable insight. Anybody know of a good guide to speed up a Wordpress based site? My sites are slow as sh*t!

 

[Techxan]

One thing that will make a dramatic difference is to reduce the photos you use to the actual size they will be displayed.

If your original is a half page in size, and you upload it but display it at 1/4 size, the browser still has to load the full image, it just displays it smaller. If you re-size the image to the displayed size then upload, it will load proportionately faster.

This really makes a difference if you have multiple images and tell WP to display them smaller than they actually are. Each full image loads and is shrunk down to the size it is displayed, increasing load times.

I am not sure, bet I bet a 72 DPI image will load faster than a 300 DPI one as well.

 

[Trojan12]

I know it affects your CTR of your adwords. So you end up paying more CPC and get lower adrank. This is purely on Adwords.

Cheers.

 

[ljt3759]

Good thread with some valuable insight. Anybody know of a good guide to speed up a Wordpress based site? My sites are slow as sh*t!

My blog post was mostly targeted at wordpress sites, you can check it out here: http://www.webmastershelpguide.com/how-to-double-the-speed-of-your-website

In basics some things you can do are:

• Use W3 Total Cache (Don't use other cache plugins, this is the best by far)
• You can minimize the HTTP requests, this post on yoast is pretty good for it http://yoast.com/reduce-http-requests-wordpress/
• A really good plugin for optimizing images is smush.it It hardly reduces the quality of an image and takes the file size down a lot, or you can open an image in photoshop (or GIMP) and click file, save for web devices.

Any questions I'd be glad to help.

 

[thedon23]

My blog post was mostly targeted at wordpress sites, you can check it out here: http://www.webmastershelpguide.com/how-to-double-the-speed-of-your-website

In basics some things you can do are:

• Use W3 Total Cache (Don't use other cache plugins, this is the best by far)
• You can minimize the HTTP requests, this post on yoast is pretty good for it http://yoast.com/reduce-http-requests-wordpress/
• A really good plugin for optimizing images is smush.it It hardly reduces the quality of an image and takes the file size down a lot, or you can open an image in photoshop (or GIMP) and click file, save for web devices.

Any questions I'd be glad to help.

Awesome! Made those changes and my site speed (according to SerpIQ) went from like 64/100 to 86/100.

Good stuff. +rep

 

[ljt3759]

Great results! I still haven't Gzipped my site and I'm on 91/100
I shall try and reduce my http requests also.

Thanks for the rep! I hope it helps other members too.