Almost everyone who owns a website will want new people to be able to find them; unless of course your website is only aimed at providing your aunties with the latest pictures of yourself. In order for visitors to find a website one of the most important things is the ability to end up high in the Google search engine results. There are many search engines out there, but let’s be honest here and admit that there is really only one show in town these days – especially in the English speaking world. If your website does not appear high in the Google search engine results for keywords associated with your content then you may as well just have a site devoted to keeping your family and friends entertained; nobody else will be able to find it.

The ability to get a website listed high in the Google search engine results is referred to as search engine optimisation (SEO). Google uses a special algorithm to rate websites and although nobody knows for sure how it works there is enough information for people to be able to arrange their website in such a way so as to look attractive to the Google bots; the software that searches the internet using the algorithm to rate sites. Doing things such as; making sure that plenty of people link to your site, ensuring that you have the correct keyword density, and paying close attention to titles and metatags, can all push you up the ranks. Now it seems a new factor, site speed, is being added to the mix; if your website takes a long time to load then this may harm your chances with the Google algorithm.

This move by Google to use site speed as a factor when ranking is actually a shrewd move; of course you won’t agree with this if you have a site that is slow and takes half a day to load. Still, it is well known that visitors get annoyed with slow sites and most will leave immediately rather than waste their time. People just don’t have the time to wait for a spectacular flash intro to load – even if it is something really fabulous. Most people just want to go a site, get the information they are after, and leave. This new algorithm is likely to be the future for SEO; although it has not yet been applied to Google in the UK and other parts of the world.