Find It Friday! Does site speed affect my Google ranking?

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your blogging questions. 

The Question

This week’s question may seem a bit techie..but bear with us..it is an important element of how your blog ranks in Google and enhances your reader experience.

I noticed that my blog took a while to load when I opened it up to show a friend on his computer recently.  He said that speed difference will affect my Google ranking. Is he right and if so, how fast should a page load and what can I do to make it load faster?

The Answer

Yes, he is right. Google uses site speed (i.e. how quickly a website responds to web requests) as part of their search ranking algorithms.

Here is what Google has to say:

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there.

Blog expert, Heidi Cohen recommends that your pages should load in under two seconds and at most three. After checking the speed, determine which elements slow your page down. Google has a list of  free tools that you can use to evaluate the speed of your site at code.google.com/speed.

Final word from Google…

While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. (However) We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed (the tools above provide a great starting point) — not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.

Do you have a question on how to blog effectively?

Leave a comment below and we will be happy to help you find the answer.