Should the amount of time it takes for a page to load in a browser influence search engine rankings for pages? According to Google it should. Matt Cutts announced last year (in November 2010) that the company had indicated that their search algorithms would be changed again as the search engine will factor in how quickly a web page loads to how well a site ranks in Google. Speed hasn’t played a role in rankings in the past, but now everything has changed…
What about WordPress SEO? Will this have an influence on bloggers as well? Unfortunately yes! Thankfully, there is a three-step solution!
To improve your WordPress Page Load Speed:
- Test your WordPress Page Load Speed with Firebug. Firebug is a Firefox extension, that helps determine which files are taking the most time to load, but not only that! It will show you exactly what actions are needed ( i.e. optimizing caching and browser rendering and minimising round trip times, request overhead or payload size) to improve that. It is a very powerful tool so start from testing your site with this add-on.
Move from shared hosting to dedicated or cloud hosting. There are many dedicated and cloud hosting services, however it is worth to do a good research before you decide to go for one. It is almost as serious decision as getting married, so choose carefully…;) - Shared hosting is very cheap (usually costs up to £10/a month), however it contains several different websites on the same physical server, which are on the same IP address. All that means that we share disk space and bandwidth with other websites. Also, you are somewhat liable for the activities of the other websites on your server if someone is running an unscrupulous website and the government orders the server to be shut down, your site will also be affected. Whereas, dedicated servers are faster and more accommodating to sites that require more disk space. Also, you are given more freedom with regards to software that can be installed in a web folder, as the effect on other websites will not to be taken into consideration.
- Install Plug-ins which will also help you improve WordPress Page Load Speed. Recently a plugin called W3 Total Cache became very popular. It improves your server performance by caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network integration.
To sum up, improving your Worpdress Page Load Speed is a great thing to do in general. Visitors to your site will be happier – the conversion rate on your side might increase or they just might use your site more often, so just read the above steps and implement them as soon as you can. Also, if you have some other ideas, please feel free to leave the comment below, so we can learn from each other!
