Website speed now impacts Google ranking

Among the reasons to have your website load quickly, the latest one will help your search engine performance. Google announced it would be factoring website speed into it’s search ranking algorithms.

It’s a good idea to have a fast website regardless, to keep your visitor’s attention easily and improve their experience, but now Google is taking more notice and giving you high marks for the “site speed” category.

There are a number of ways to speed up your website, but the most important include:

• Use XHTML/CSS so your content downloads quickly
• Make sure images and other media files are optimized for the web in terms of file size
• Avoid heavy use of Flash, video and image-based design
• Combine JavaScript and CSS files to reduce number of file requests
• Compress code using GZip on the server
• Pick a reliable web hosting company that doesn’t overcrowd its servers or oversell its resources

Yahoo has put together an extensive list of best practices for speeding up your website that’s definitely worth a look.

This is a great addition to Google’s search ranking method, because it ultimately means a better user experience. In an era of impatience, only the quick survive.