Back in April of 2009, Google decided to add “Page Speed” to its list of things to measure when determining search result rankings. Page speed is simply how long it takes for your website to load. But how important is page speed when it comes to SEO? It’s actually not very important it turns out. Page speed is just one of over 200 different variables that are calculated when Google considers page rankings and is given a low/moderate importance value.

So why is page speed so important? While page speed doesn’t have a significant impact on page rankings, it does have a significant impact on conversion rate. Here are some statistics for you:

• Shopzilla increased page load time from 6 seconds to 1.2 seconds and increased revenue by 12% and page views by 25%.
• Amazon increased revenue by 1% for every 100 milliseconds of improvement.
• Yahoo! increased traffic by 9% for every 400 milliseconds of improvement.
• By reducing website speed by 2.2 seconds Mozilla estimates that 60 million more Firefox downloads occur every year.
• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
• A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.

Sources: Strange Loop Network, KISS metrics (very cool infographic)

I could continue to produce more statistics, but I think you get the point. People are impatient and don’t like having to wait for anything. If your website is taking longer than 3 seconds to load, almost half of the people viewing it are just going to leave. This has a massive effect on how people will use you site and how willing they are to use it again.

Getting up to Speed

In July of 2011, Google came out with a service called Page Speed Online which is an online service that automatically speeds up loading of your web pages. Here’s Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site from Yahoo that has a lot of good and detailed information.

A few other tools to help your speed your website:

• YSlow
• Pingdom
• Pylot
• GTmetrix

There are hundreds of tools out there to analyze page speed and these are just a few to get started. Even the smallest increase in speed can make a pretty significant difference.

Continue reading: Nice Sites Finish First
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who resist change and those who embrace it. I see myself as the latter. Change is inevitable, you can only slow it down, but you cannot stop it. In this industry, there's the leading edge and there's the bleeding edge. To lead is to survive and to bleed is to thrive. You aren't two steps ahead of what is already happening, then you are behind. In an industry and environment like this, change is frequent, change is fast, and change is necessary.

Over the past five years of my life I have lived in a different place every year with the biggest change was moving to Fort Worth, Texas last July for my job at the Balcom Agency. I had never been to Texas and it's a long 17 hour trip from Indiana. Aside from moving across the country by myself, it was also what most people would consider my first "real job".

After moving down here just 7 months ago, I'm already moving again. This time it's only 15 minutes from where I currently live which is the shortest move I have ever made. Although there is a lot of trouble/hassle that comes with moving, I find it to be exciting as well. New neighbors, new apartment, and I'll be a lot closer to downtown. I think half the fun of moving around a lot is knowing the fact that you can move around. There's so many people that are tied down with commitments like houses, family, kids, or other commitments that they don't have the freedom to just pick up and move.

As someone who gets bored easily, I live for constant change. But change is not always something big. Change is not always moving, getting a new job, having kids, or buying a new car. These things are life changes that don't happen near enough to keep me satiated. It's the small things like NetFlix, Gamefly, Pandora, Reddit, and Last.fm that provide me with my daily changes that get me through each week. The different movies, music, games, news articles, and other things allow me to constantly have new experiences. I'm constantly looking for ways to better the situation of myself and those around me. That is change.

I'll leave you with this.

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing. ~Saint Augustine