I’ll admit it. I’m redesigning ChurchCrunch again. I promise that this next change will not only be extremely significant but it also won’t change for a long time (or at least longer than the last redesign). I also have some much larger plans… but I’ll share those later.
But here’s what I’ve been thinking about a lot these days: Site Speed and SEO.
It’s become increasingly clear to me (and all signs point that direction too) that your page download speed is going to be a considerable factor for ranking of sites in search engines, serps, and general SEO.
Seriously. Read more after the jump…
The proof is really in the fact that significant search engines have released products that do one thing: Rate your site and download speed:
- Google Page Speed
- Yahoo! YSlow for Firebug
I think this is extremely significant. In addition, Matt Cutts, a Google Developer, has outright mentioned that this may be in fact an additional factor. Google yesterday even updated a new Site Performance tool as well! Yeah, I see where this is going…
So, yes. It’s important, so much so that it’s worth redesigning from the ground up. So much so that I’m building out a WordPress theme that’ll do just that and more (and this one will be available for download!). So much so that I’ve invested tons of time and money into my servers and hosting, optimizing them for caching, balancing, mySQL optimization. So much so that I’ve taken the dive into CDN technology and am now leveraging Amazon’s S3 cloud for both this blog and my other one:
Thankfully, it’s not too expensive, but just look at the numbers: I transfered 33 GB of data last month. When was the last time you did that with your blog?
Is the cost justifiable? Absolutely. The sites are loading my images faster than ever before and tests outside of the country have fared extremely well.
The neat thing is that I haven’t even maximized my usage of it yet: I’m just doing images and media through it. The next stage is putting all CSS, javascript, and theme files on the S3.
Why go through all the hassle and also the increased financial burden? Because I believe that the return for a fast-loading site is going to payoff (literally) long term. And, my users will thank me for it when they don’t have to wait for content to load.
I don’t have to tell you how frustrating it can be to have to wait for content to load. You know this to be true!
And, of course, besides the speed bump, it’ll increase my SEO results and performance as well. Win-Win.
My point is this: Invest is good technology and spend time optimizing your site for speed. It’ll make your users more happy as well as search engines. Spend just as much time on your site load strategy as the design. (In fact, if you’re going to sacrifice anything I’d kill off the design first.)
(If you’re interested in knowing what I’m doing for Amazon S3, I’m using the Amazon S3 Plugin for WordPress. It’s freaking killer and almost too-easy to setup.)
[Image from MKamp]
Name:kmorgan_rktect says
John,
You indeed are a madman! Awesome read!!
Kelly Morgan
human3rror says
mad i am. man i am. awesome, questionable.
Jono says
Nice article, by site (WordPress) is media heavy and gets traffic spike. I too wanted to reduce my data traffic costs. I did a lot of research and ultimately testing into getting the right solution and selected Aptimize WAX – it sounds like you've found what works for you. My data transfer costs are down avg 32% which is amazing to me – and its just a great feeling to have a fast site. What benefits have you seen by making your website faster with the A S3 plugin?
human3rror says
Besides increased load speed, especially in other countries, I believe the user experience has been directly impacted. Although it's hard to gauge return in terms of SEO, I do believe that this is going to be an ever-increasing note for those serious about content delivery and organic returns.
i'm planning for the future.
In addition, there are a number of sites planned that are going to be growing fast. I want to offload as much work on my servers as possible, even if I'm on dedicated-virtual.
human3rror says
yeah, definitely. w3 cache and a number of other plugins do this. of course, you can do this yourself.
Kyle Reed says
you lost me after the first paragraph, but I trust you.
human3rror says
you're a smart guy.
Graham Brenna says
ha
Tom says
Speed is a feature.
In addition to hosting the CSS and JavaScript on a CDN have you considered minifying and combining the files? I've actually just finished working a project where I did this just and evaluated the results (using YSlow and Page Speed interestingly enough). Permitting the markup is solid, there was a noticeable increase in performance.
Just my two cents.
Graham Brenna says
Can't wait to see the new design! Hopefully my communications pastor will let me contact you about a new MU blog for our ministry teams at my church. I don't want to waste your time unless he says it's a good idea and will let me go with M!lk Engine. 🙂