How to Improve Your Page Speed for Better Search Engine Ranking

Part of a web design should be how to improve your page speed for better search engine rankings. The best place to start is to know what slows the loading of a page down. The use of flash, videos, and java script significantly slow down the loading of a web page. These are added to impress the visitor to your site, but do nothing for your search engine results or rankings. The reason being is that the search engine bots do not take notice of them. No information from these components of your web page are factored into the way you are ranked except for the fact that is slows down the loading. By being slower than your competitor, you will drop in the rankings. If these components are important to you, have them linked with a CSS menu so the bots can follow the links and take notice of them. This will also speed up your load time.

Your web design probably has pictures in it to help the visitor visualize the image or idea you are trying to convey. This is very common and sometimes needed, just remember each picture takes time to load. By limiting the number of visual references to each page, the pages will load faster and help in their ranking. Frames around the pictures also take time to load. They do look nice but for sake of speed, avoid using them as much as possible.

Server speed is a major factor on how long it takes for a web page to load. The economical server providers that jam thousands of sites into one server are generally slower than the more reputable providers. This will be a financial decision by weighing in the cost savings from the inexpensive provider against the loss of ranking from the search engines for slow loading speed. The best way to determine this is to look at how fast your competition is loading. If your site is lagging behind, then the choice is made for you if you wish to improve in the rankings.

Your server is not the only one connected to your site. Most sites have advertisements on them. If your advertiser uses the economy servers, then a decision should be made if the revenue the ad brings in is worth the slowing of the load time of your page. If you decide to keep the slow loading ad, consider if they will stay if your ranking drops to the point that your traffic is affected. You might lose this revenue after all and your ranking will have to be built up again.

The type of site you have affects the speed so determine which web design is more suited to your needs. The database driven sites have and can contain thousands of files that all have to load while static driven sites are generally limited to less than 100 files. The less information that has to load, the faster the load time will be.

Placement of content on the page is one of the details that should be thought about. The little things do add up. By placing your content in the proper order, it can make it easier to be seen by the search engine bots. This can also make it faster to load.

Knowing how to improve your page speed for better search engine rankings involves many factors. Trial and error is the best way to decide what is right for your site since every site is unique.