Website download speed and SEO

As broadband becomes available in most homes and offices around the world, network connections are far superior compared to days of old when users would have to wait for pages to load, get frustrated, and then switch away. And most would agree that in the current climate the faster users get content delivered to them the better.

Web developers are always looking for ways in which to speed up the delivery of pages on their websites. Some try to reduce the amount of content on their websites and only display relevant and useful copy. Some totally remove images and animations in the hope that this will sort out speed issues. But one of the primary reasons why the search engines, especially Google, put emphasis on speed is because of user satisfaction.

As mentioned earlier, nobody wants to wait to see web pages come up, they want them there in an instant. And this continuous flirtation that Google has with offering accessibility, usability has resulted in a number of SEOs now changing their website platform and going for lighter, slicker pages.

Internet Marketing has taken advantage of programming languages like CSS to bring to the table fresher looking web sites, which are very quick to download and offer the ability for crawlers to come along and read content with ease. This all makes for a perfect platform by which to base a Search Engine Optimisation campaign, as there is much that can be done to make content more attractive-looking in Google's eyes.

With the option of having CSS styles to play with, webmasters can customise the look and feel of a web page, without making the page difficult for search engines to read. When styles are turned off, text can appear at the top of a page, along with headings, links, and any other elements which will give Google the chance to make judgement about a page.

With the above, it is clear that Google is putting users first, and the message is clear, if you want to rank well in the engines, give the users what they want and you can achieve the rewards of all your hard work and effort with better positions in the search engines.