Getting Search Engine Love Means Getting the Edge on Your Rivals

17 September 2009

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You can have a great business idea, source a fantastic product and build an attention-grabbing website, but if no one knows you exist it won't matter.

According to internet hosting provider UKFast, getting your website high up the search engines has always been important but never before has it been so imperative to rank highly. And how do you do that? By achieving search engine love.

The secret is speed. Speed is a crucial factor to internet users' and is also now a central part of search engine algorithms for determining top rankings.

So why value and reward speed? It is all about keeping users happy so that they continue to stay loyal and the search giants have worked out that what users want are fast loading websites.

So having a rapid loading website can deliver page one rankings and this is crucial because research from Google states that 90% of users do not look beyond the first page. So you need to rank in the top 10 in your industry to gain major exposure.

Take for example social networking site www.alljoinon.com. After increasing the speed of its hosting and therefore website loading speed, visitor numbers increased from 4,000/mth to 60,000/mth within 8 weeks. This was down to impressive page one ranking and vastly improved customer experience. Similarly, Troo Healthcare improved visitor numbers by 20% in just one month after switching to a faster hosting solution.

And it's not just about pleasing Google. Bing and Yahoo are poised to combine their search engines to create a new force that already holds 6% of the UK market. And considering that Bing alone has grown 50% since taking over from Windows Live in May, the new entity is set to gain increasing significance. Either way, if you use Google or Bing, both place a major emphasis on a rapid user experience.

So how do you achieve search engine love? Quite simply, you need to make sure that your website is loading as fast as possible.

This can be achieved a number of ways. Ensuring your hosting provider can deliver a consistently fast service is the first way. The second is to optimise your website to ensure it loads as quickly as possible. Using fewer and faster redirects, not using interstitial pages and compressing the size of your website data are just a few ways to begin.

For more information on the importance of speed in search engine rankings call UKFast on 0800 458 4545 or visit http://www.ukfast.co.uk/googlelove.html.

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