Speed Matters: How Google’s new algorithm affects you

Photographers beware! Google has changed its search rank criteria to include speed. How fast your Web pages load in a user’s browser will now be a determining factor in how high you rank in search engines.

Why should we be concerned? Image size.

As photographers, most of our content is image-based. This means large file sizes and slow loading times.

It is now more important than ever to be sure that your images are properly compressed. The balance between large viewing size and small file size should be moved up on your list of concerns when it comes to your blogging and Web design.

It is important to provide our clients (and prospects!) with large image sizes so as to optimize their viewing experience, but file size should also be a factor when making decisions about design and how you process your images for posting to the Web.

3 steps you can take that won’t affect image quality

1. Save your blog images to the exact size needed for display before uploading to the Web. Do not compress them later using html or your blog’s editing tools.
2. Split your photo-heavy posts into multiple pages.
3. Limit the number of posts displayed on each page of your blog. Look under “Reading” settings in WordPress.

All in all, this is a good thing. I know that I much prefer faster loading sites and i’m sure you do as well. Google is focused on user experience beyond the initial search result and I think this change will definitely have a major impact on the web as a whole.

Get on board! Remember to keep your site(s) simple and quick and hopefully this change will not have a negative impact on your rankings.

Take this new criteria seriously and you could actually see a rank increase as others in your market are not as quick to respond.

What do you think? Are you going to make some changes? Are you confident in the speed of your site and the way you currently handle images? Post a comment and lets discuss!