The internet’s largest search engine recently announced a small but important change to its ranking algorithm. They are taking a web site’s speed into account when deciding how high it will rank in the search results. This means that if there are two web sites that are equal in all other respects, the one that downloads most quickly will be shown first in the search results.
What does this mean for you as a webmaster? It means that you have to optimize your site and remove any unnecessary graphics or information. Is there any content that you put on to a separate page; you could then put a link to that page. Remove any images that aren’t essential It is often better to provide information in plain text, rather than by using a graphic.
There are also some other methods that you can use to make your site download faster. If you will be keeping graphics on your site, such as your logo, consider reducing their quality. Programs such as Photoshop allow you to select the quality of JPEG images; consider reducing the quality of the image, which will reduce the size of the image. Alternatively, try changing the format of your image from a JPEG to a GIF (or vice versa). The JPEG and GIF formats were designed for particular types for images, and you are likely to find that one will be significantly smaller than the other.
Consider removing any Javascript or other scripts from your site, particularly any scripts that could be replaced with a server-side script. If you have Javascript that validates information in a form, consider doing the validation after the form has been submitted.
A content delivery network (CDN) will help speed up the delivery of your site. A CDN has several servers located at various points around the world. When a visitor requests a web page or image from your site, they will be directed to the closet server. This will help to minimize the latency.
If you only have one server looking after your site, ensure that the server compresses the information before sending it to the user. Most modern browsers are capable of receiving compressed files and displaying them as normal. Compression works particularly well on HTML and CSS files, where a small number of tags are used repetitively. If you run Apache on your own server, consider using the mod_deflate module to compress your files. If you are looking for a web hosting firm, select one that has the mod_deflate module installed; you may need to contact their helpdesk to see if they have this module.
You can stop a user’s browser from downloading components that have already been downloaded by adding an Expires: header to your files. If your site has any static pages or images that are unlikely to change in the near future, an Expires: header will tell the browser how long it can keep the file for. The browser will then keep a copy of the file in its cache, and will not download the file again until the date specified in the Expires: header. You can easily add an Expires: header if you have Apache installed on your own server, and you have the mod_expires module installed.
If you follow several of these steps, you will reduce the amount of time it takes to download your site. This will hopefully have a positive effect on your rankings in the search engines.