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Website Loading Speed And How It Affects Search Position
The other day I watched a video by the pre-eminent SEO Leader, Brian Dean. The gist of the video was that he ran a test to see if improving his website speed score on Google Page Speed would change the position of one of his posts in the searches.
According to him, it did not. I guess Brian is basically saying that the speed of your website is not the most important ranking factor that Google considers when deciding where to place your website in the searches.
So, where does this leave us, at this point, when for so long we had the notion that Google put so much weight on website loading speed?
Well, I’m not going to rule speed out yet as a ranking factor. It’s possible that Professor Dean didn’t wait long enough to check his results (a week, according to him), OR, his web page ranked so high to begin with because of its domain authority that speed did not have that big of an effect. Who knows? I’m not changing my opinion just yet.
I will, however, put a greater focus on what I believe are two of the other most important ranking factors, Domain Authority and Site Popularity.
Site Popularity is a term used byiDesignYours for how many people visited your site, how long they stayed on it, and if they liked it enough to share it on social media.
So let’s talk about Domain Authority, in plain English. Domain Authority is a score that Moz gives your website url.https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority If you want to learn more about it, this is an excellent article.
The basic guiding principle is that you can increase your domain authority by improving your backlink profile. This means acquiring high domain authority backlinks from websites, guest posts and directories. It is a painstaking process, but once your numbers are up- you can reach previously unattainable positions in the search results.
And what about Site Popularity, as I termed it? How do you improve this? Well, there is only one way apparently, and it has been written in hieroglyphics on the side of a pyramid in Egypt: engaging content. Notice I didn’t say great content, I said engaging. Being engaging is one of the ingredients that makes a piece of content great. Your goal is to make your content appealing to your specific niche audience, the ones who will be waiting around, drooling for your next piece because the last one was so good. It’s the ones who will pick up the phone and call you for your services, because you have shown your authority on the subject through your knowledge and eloquent elocution exhibited in the content.
If your content meets a searcher’s criteria and answers what they were looking for in the first place, they will want to share this great find with their friends too. This will bring you more traffic from social media. Remember, Google measures the traffic to your website. If your site is popular, they assume you must be doing something right, so they’ll move you up in the searches. They’re not mind readers, they’re data readers.
Please let me know your opinions, event if they are different. We’re all here to learn. Good luck, we’re all counting on you!
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