SEPT. 6, ISSUE #1435
|
Article Categories |
• Advertising
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Business
• Ecommerce
• Google
• Linking Strategies
• Marketing
• RSS
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Security
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• Writing
|
|
Web Search
|
• Add a Site
• Rapid Paid Inclusion
• Low Cost Search Engine Ads
• Search 85K News Sources
|
|
Blog Search
|
• Add a Blog
• Search 38,350+ Blogs
• Grab a Blog RSS Feed
• Grab a Blog Content Feed
|
|
Tools & Services |
|
|
|
Webmaster Tools |
• Web Page Analyzer
• Meta Tag Generator
• Keyword Popularity Tool
• Link Popularity Checker
• Search Engine Submitter
• Internet Tools Directory
• Site Resource Directory
|
|
Traffic Exchanges |
Get Free Visitors to Your Site with these Outstanding Services:
TrafficZap
TrafficSwarm
|
|
Site of the Day |
Open Site Explorer is a link popularity checker and backlink
analysis tool. Simply type in a URL to get link data (top pages, linking pages and domains, anchor text distribution, link metrics,
etc.) on your website or run a comparison with another URL.
Does your web site qualify as a SPN Site of the Day? Webmaster resource sites can apply via email:
sotd@sitepronews.com
|
|
App of the Day |
Free FotoMix 7.4 (2.57 MB) allows you to mix
and manipulate your photos. You can crop, resize, rotate pictures; remove, add, or alter backgrounds;
design eye-catching photo collages, illustrations, wallpapers, Web graphics, etc. Freeware for Windows 2k/ XP/ Vista/ 7.
If you have a Webmaster App that you would like listed on the SPN site, send us an email with details to:
wapps@sitepronews.com
|
|
SPN Partners |
|
Hostway's Business Broadcast: - Maximize
your marketing power with an instant Web presence in multiple high traffic Internet directories! Hostway's Tango Reseller Platform
has the industry's broadest set of white-label hosting services. Just sign up, set your revenue margin and sell!
Web-Source - Your Guide to Professional
Web Site Design & Development.
Template Monster - The Web's number one website
templates are available for immediate download.
TechNewsletters.com - A directory of IT newsletters with ratings & descriptions.
NewWebDirectory - A new internet web directory of professionally reviewed
web sites providing both freebie and paid site submission.
FreeWebMonitoring - Monitor your web site's availability 24 hours a day,
7 days a week with email alerts and weekly web site statistics.
DropJack - Add news, blog posts and links to one of the fastest growing
social bookmarking services on the Web. Join over 93,000 active members.
Top 10 Exposure - Forget PPC. Get Google-Type ads
for $3 - $4 per month and top 10 exposure across 100's of search engines & web directories.
Rapid Paid Inclusion - Add Your URL to 50+ Search Engines.
Fast Inclusion, Recrawls and Backlinks.
Get a Featured Article Position on GoArticles - Put your
article at the top of any GoArticles.com category or sub-category for greater exposure and better rankings.
|
|
|
Website Speed Penalty -
Google is Testing Your Load Time!
By Aaron Steinheinkel (c) 2010
|
After Google started using website speed as a parameter in their
ranking algorithms every webmaster has a good reason to keep an
eye on the page load speed of their website. Google's bending
over backwards to spread the word about this new speed penalty
is proof in itself since big G is usually very secretive about
pending algorithm changes.
From the announcement we learn that the speed penalty was
introduced following experiments by Google that revealed the
impact website speed has on Internet users.
But the results of the experiment come as no surprise even for
someone that has started to use the Internet recently; users
prefer websites that load faster and tend to spend more time on
such websites.
However, the search engine giant has been careful to state that
even though website speed is now a factor, it is not the primary
parameter for determining results. The quality and relevance of
information is still the determining factor, but if your website
speed is slow, you will receive a Google penalty.
This implies that it is important for you as a webmaster start
to assess the speed of your website to determine whether
you are moving further down the search engine results pages
(SERPs) because your website is slower than your direct
competitors.
How Can Google Know Your Page Speed?
It is vital that you understand the basics of how Google's
algorithm determines your website speed and thus your SERP
ranking. The search engine uses two main factors when it comes
to speed assessment.
First, your website will receive a higher speed ranking if it
responds faster to Googlebot, the crawler program Google uses
to find and index websites.
Second, your website will also receive a good speed ranking if
it records a faster loading time on Google Toolbar than your
competition. To better assist you in analyzing your website
speed, Google has added a page speed report to their webmaster
tools found within the Google webmasters 'lab' section.
|
The tool and the reports can be used to compare your website's
page load times to that of other websites. Once you are armed
with the information of where your page ranks in the speed
hierarchy, you can start to make the necessary code and
structure changes to make it respond faster.
Your first priority should be to make sure you have no SLOW pages
on your site. Pages that take two seconds or more to load and
pages that are marked as SLOW in Google Webmaster Tools need
to be improved to avoid a Google penalty for website speed.
When you have no slow pages left, try to make all your pages
load in less than a second. Read on to see why this is
important.
Having a website that loads quickly has more benefits than just
higher search engine ranking and avoiding a Google penalty.
A website optimized for speed reduces the bandwidth required on
your hosting service, thus reducing your overall hosting costs.
Faster websites also provide a better browsing experience because
users are able to get information faster and navigate through
your website more easily.
In addition, websites optimized for speed work better when
accessed on mobile phones, PDAs and other devices that do not
have the same level of processing memory as your standard laptop
or desktop computer.
|
Even though you can have a mobile variant of your website
which is trimmed down, some users will want to view your site
in full HTML on their phone or PDA and a faster loading website
will have a better chance of successfully loading on such
devices.
As a webmaster, there are a number of free tools that you can
use to improve the loading speed of your website. I have listed
three of the more popular ones below:
Page Speed
Page Speed is an open-source add-on for the Mozilla Firefox
browser. It evaluates the speed of your website and gives you
suggestions on how to improve your website speed.
Page Speed runs tests on the architectural configuration of both
your web server and your website's front end code. After running
these tests, it gives you a report on your website speed and
suggestions on how to improve the speed of your website.
Yslow
Yslow is a free Firefox
add-on from Yahoo integrated with Firebug software for website
development. It displays statistics, an evaluation report and
also provides suggestions on how best to improve the speed of
your website using best practices.
Yslow comes integrated with other tools for performance
evaluation, including Smush. Use it and JSLint to further
enhance your website performance. Yslow is a Yahoo product
but is still useful for avoiding the Google speed penalty.
SSEL Speed Tools
There is also a website speed check at Secret
Search Engine Labs where you can get a quick answer on how
big your webpage is and how fast it loads.
The Website Speed Quick Fix
There are several factors that affect page load speeds on your
website, many of them technical and best solved by your
webmaster or developer, but some changes you can do yourself as
long as you have some experience with HTML and creating web
pages.
Reduce the number, size and quality of images and use less
audio, flash and Javascript. Reduce the length of the page by
splitting a long page into several short pages. Strip the source
code of redundant HTML, Javascript and CSS code that just slows
things down. Don't use images and other components that are
linked live from other domains; instead use a copy on your own
server.
And don't forget to keep your eyes on Google Webmaster Tools
to see how your site performs compared to the competition.
About The Author
Aaron Steinheinkel is virtual lab scientist at Secret Search
Engine Labs, a
new search engine. Use the
website speed checker to improve
the speed of your website.
Printer Friendly Version of this
Article
|
 |
