I’m taking a chance that few who read this blog are as passionate as I am about college football and search engine optimization. I realize that. But there is a link. I promise. Just let me explain.
Bobby Bowden (below) is a legend in college football. He is a Hall-of-Fame coach that has won more games than almost anyone who has ever coached the sport (388 to be exact). He’s 80 years old and is in the news because he just decided (some say forced to decide) to retire after this season ends.
Bowden will be remembered for a lot of positive things – but the hard core college football junkie will remember him for recruiting speed. In its heyday, Bowden’s Florida State teams won with a whirlwind of pure athleticism and speed. His players were just plain faster than the other teams’. And as the saying goes, “There’s no defense for speed”.
So what’s this got to do with SEO? Google announced today an experimental feature called Site Performance making its debut in Webmaster Tools. And guess what? It’s all about speed!
Google has said that they want to make the web faster. Now they are giving every webmaster a way to check and see just how fast their site downloads in a browser. Google’s theory is a lot like Bowden’s – speed is essential to winning. And in the search giant’s clase they are talking about winning customers. The faster a page downloads, the more likely a person is to have a better experience on the site. In turn, the site will be more profitable due to higher retention rates.
Not only does Site Performance provide download times, it also tells you how speed on certain pages can be improved.
So what is Google getting at? Speed is becoming increasingly important for SEO. Although they haven’t come out and said this verbatim (correct me if I am wrong here), it sure feels like Google is trying to tell everyone that speed is going to be a consideration for search rank. So that means we all need to consider optimizing our download speeds folks.
To see Site Performance, click on the “Labs: link on the Webmaster Tools left-hand menu.
Check it out and let me know what you think.
