How fast can you go?

Speed matters.  On the internet, it won’t get you a ticket and it’s not even a waste of gas.  Today’s webinar, The New Google Algorithm – Structuring Your Website for Optimal SEO, emphasized quickness as one of the newly important factors in how sites are ranked on search engine results pages.

(Ben, as our resident speed demon, approves.)

Speed, in this context, is not about having a lead foot or even fingers that type so fast they can’t be seen.  The first crucial speed sector is how quickly pages load.  No one likes waiting for a page to load.  Google, in this instance, feels our pain.  Slow-loading sites are now penalized for essentially annoying users who want their results and want them now.

To be fair, Google has also demanded time-trials for its spiders.  Those little crawlers have to cover a lot more territory a lot faster than they used to.  Spiders now check out more pages and pages deeper within sites.  Quick!  Get those supporting pages updated before the spiders see them!

Additionally, new content from social media sources pops up quickly on results pages.  Someone’s tweet about an embarrassing accident with your product can show up on a results page above your home page.  Getting engaged in social media and participating in the conversations that are already going on out there about your products or services can help you lay claim to those real time search results, not to mention speedily respond to praise or blame.

The clock is ticking…