Tips for tweaking your website for Google’s new search engine updates and modifications to Google’s algorithm.
Sometime after the New Year, Google will roll out a new algorithm called Caffeine to improve search results.
For the most part, Google constantly tweaks and adjusts its search engine across all its data centers to improve speed and accuracy.
This includes analyzing how people search, what they search for, and what they do after finding the search results.
Google says that hundreds of factors contribute to how Google ranks and displays search results.
I have followed news and posts across many reputable websites for the last few months and noticed a recurring theme: speed. If your website loads at a tortoise rate of more than 20 seconds, your search engine results suffer. A fast-loading website will help it rank a little better in Google.
Here are factors that affect your website’s loading speed.
FACTORS FOR LOADING SPEED
Not all hosting companies are the same. Your website might be hosted on a shared server with hundreds of other websites, which can tax the server’s bandwidth.
The amount of graphics or animation running on your homepage
Check with your web designer if you suspect your splash or home page is loading slowly. Ask them what can be done to speed things up. Perhaps you have a Flash animation that can be replaced with a faster-loading JavaScript animation, or you could remove the animation and use a single image. instead instead
Any third-party application running on your homepages, such as RSS feeds, Ads, or Widgets
Many RSS feeds come from third-party sources, so you have no control over the speed at which these are delivered. You may have a page that pulls data from multiple sources. Be sure these are loading quickly.
Third-party widgets include weather or other information sources. Ensure these load quickly and don’t add seconds to your homepage load time.
You may also have ads coming from third-party sources. Most ads, such as Google or Yahoo, load quickly. However, if you serve image-based or video ads, test your page load time with and without these ad feeds to compare results.
The type of coding for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and CMS on your homepage
HTML and CSS are the table-based and DIV-based development behind your web pages. There are ways to streamline the code on your pages to shave off page load time.
CMS or Content Management Systems
Your website might run on a CMS like Dot Net Nuke, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Magento, or another CMS. Check with your web developer to make sure you are running the latest build version and have installed recent updates or patches. This will improve your loading speed and help protect against hackers.
There you have it. When the next big Google Quake hits after the New Year, you should be able to gain a competitive edge on the Internet by understanding their new algorithm and how to leverage it.