“[I]n 2010… Google announced website speed would begin having an impact on search ranking.” Here is what you need to know and what you can do to increase Google ranking and visitor engagement.
A reason for having an Experts Directory is for Google traffic that you would not get without such a directory. One thing you can do to increase your Experts Directory Google ranking is to improve page load time.
Moz.com has an excellent article on How Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Ranking.
Here are the highlights:
[I]n 2010… Google announced website speed would begin having an impact on search ranking. Now, the speed at which someone could view the content from a search result would be a factor.
Unfortunately, the exact definition of “site speed” remained open to speculation. The mystery widened further in June, when Google’s Matt Cutts announced that slow-performing mobile sites would soon be penalized in search rankings as well.
Clearly Google is increasingly acting upon what is intuitively obvious: A poor performing website results in a poor user experience, and sites with poor user experiences deserve less promotion in search results.
Back end performance is particularly important:
Websites with servers and back end infrastructure that could quickly deliver web content had a higher search ranking than those that were slower… [S]ites with faster back ends receive a higher rank.
Here are the technical details:
The back end includes the web servers, their network connections, the use of CDNs, and the back end application and database servers. Website owners should explore ways to improve their TTFB. This includes using CDNs, optimizing your application code, optimizing database queries, and ensuring you have fast and responsive web servers.
What You Can Do
First, test the speed of your site with a general Google PageSpeed Insights or one like WebPageTest that allows you to test speed by user location. This will give you the benchmark you need.
According to Softpedia the average page load time of a website across the web is 2.45 seconds.
As loading time is a factor in Google ranking and visitor engagement, you need to make decisions that take speed into account in order to maximize brand building opportunities. For example each additional image decreases page load time, ask yourself if you need all of them.
If a user does not go to your site it means they are going to a competitor.
Expertise Finder Page Speed
Here are some numbers on how powering your Experts Directory using our technology increases Google ranking and visitor engagement:
– deliver search results in 1.4 seconds (average of sites across web 2.45 seconds, source: Softpedia)
– receive 62% of visitors via Google (top search queries: expert name and faculty name)
Contact me for a free assessment of your experts outreach on your website: stavros@expertisefinder.com.