Page load time and SEO

Only a few months ago I was thinking of writing an article about how the relatively recent pervasiveness of broadband, high-speed Internet has changed the way sites are developed. It wasn't that long ago, when one of the major goals of designing a web page was to keep the entire thing under 30Kb. Now developers and designers are using background images that are larger than that - let alone the media rich content that fills the pages.

In many ways I was relieved that webpages were becoming larger. It can be quite taxing to keep shaving off page size, in order to accomodate people on dial-up connections. Incidentally, is anyone reading this on dial-up? Once the vast majority of sites started to fill out a bit, the oppresive air of size-restriction began to dissipate ushering in a new era of more attractive and visually appealing sites.

I felt it was a pity then when Google announced that it would begin taking into account page download times as part of it's ranking of a site. This is not to be confused with the Page Quality score that Google AdWords uses to determine which are the best pages for ads.

Here's a quote from Google released last month:

There's two ways you can increase your page loading times:

1. Decrease webpage sizes
2. Increase bandwidth and transfer rate

The second option might require you to upgrade hosting package with your provider, or move elsewhere, but it should only be seriously considered if you have already shaved down webpage sizes as much as you can without impacting useability or making undesired sacrifices on aesthetics.

In general, it's good practice to keep webpages small. It will save you money in the long run because inevitably the site will require less resources. It remains a bit of a balancing act because you also don't want to get left behind with boring text only pages while your comeptitors' are creating exciting, rich interfaces that capitalize on the bigger, better and faster Internet.

You can test out webpage speed by going to Alexa and viewing your website profile there. It should contain an average load time reading, like so: