How quickly does your web site take to load on average?

Slow load times are rarely a factor in managers’ minds (unless the page is so slow that it takes 10 – 20 seconds for a page to display fully) but an announcement by Google’s Matt Cutts indicates the search giant may soon be taking it more seriously – which means web masters should be too.

Google’s aims are for search to become lightning-fast, so when a browser types in your URL, your page displays the moment they click ‘Go’. Sites that load faster will likely be favoured by Google in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Having a faster site could potentially mean the difference between position number one and position number two for your chosen key phrase.

Therefore, it’s important you consider these two main factors: hosting and development. Using an ‘Out of the Box’ web site template and hosting solution is likely to have search unfriendly flaws in it, but a specially designed web site hosted on a dedicated server is a good way to ensure a minimal load time.

While load time may become an important factor, Google considers over 200 variables when determining search ranking, so it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture. All the same, we have often seen that an attention to detail can make a huge difference to performance in the search engines. We will keep you posted with any further developments.