Tips for Ranking Higher on Google

Search engine optimization is a one of a kind industry since it’s probably one of the few, if not the only industry, where no one has the all the right answers. Google is in control and immediately when someone is even close to catching on to their search engine pattern – the algorithms switch. Nonetheless, SEO specialists have been fairly successful in figuring out the science behind search engine optimization and some of the equations that add up to the mix. Google algorithms include a number of factors and range from page titles, H1 tags, and number of links to your website. The most recent addition to the algorithm mix has been website speed.

In April 2010, Google announced that site speed would now be a ranking factor. Specifically, the Google Webmaster Central Blog states that “site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.”

Google’s mission is to provide the best searching experience to the end users. A user’s experience will be more enjoyable when using a site that returns the results as fast as possible and although the site speed is only a small factor in ranking (for now), it still can affect the conversion rates. Even if your website is ranked high, waiting time and slow loading will result in the user quickly abandoning your website.

Google says it’s not a crucially important signal in the algorithm at this point— for now. Typically, Google has been known to start small with already solid plans to expand in place, easing in the market slowly. It’s hard to believe that Google would offer tools for improving your website speed if they didn’t have plans to increase the algorithm weight in the very near future. I mean, they even go as far as saying “we encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed” clearly indicating that the impact of your site speed will soon increase.

With that being said, having a fast and reliable website performance links back to your hosting provider – does your host deliver premium quality results?

Take a look at some of these tools to check your websites performance:

Page Speed
YSlow
WebPagetest
Webmaster Tools

Google says it’s to help better the internet but regardless of the motivation, businesses that rely on the internet are faced with a new challenge. This means there’s going to be some changes that need to be done, and most of it is going to depend on your host. Whatever it is you’re going through, you will be asking yourself: How fast is my website and what is the first thing I need to address to make it faster?

Your host is your backbone so it’s important to know you’re in quality (server hosting) hands. Start with an Atum VPS trial (www.atum.com) to fully experience a fast host and potentially raise your Google rankings.