Attorney Marketing News

Posts Tagged ‘page rank’

In April 2010, Google announced that it will now be using page load time as a factor in calculating page rank. Websites that are not optimized for speed could be penalized.

>>Read Google’s Announcement

What will LA Wolfe be doing to make my site run faster?

One of the most important changes we will be making to help your website run faster is to reduce the number of HTTP requests for your web pages.  When someone visits a web page, different information about the page is called from multiple files and images.  These are called HTTP requests.  Reducing the number of HTTP requests will make your website run faster.

To improve page load time we are optimizing old Java Scripts, PHP files, and CSS files, “suturing” CSS and Java scripts when applicable, and creating CSS sprites as appropriate.  We are also reviewing your source code for unnecessary instructions (if we SEOd your site we already corrected code errors for you) and addressing other things that may not have been an issue when your website developer created your site.  (If we developed your website it was optimized for speed and accessibility when we completed work on your site – long before Google changed their practices.)

We will be contacting each client individually to let you know specifically, the work we are doing, but can assure you it will not change how your website looks, and we will not perform and work not within the scope of our contract without your permission.

Will I have to pay for these performance upgrades?

Although the changes needed to make client sites run as fast as possible are significant, we consider them critical.  Our brilliant SEO work that has gotten all our clients on to page one of Google may no longer be enough.  For this reason, if you are on a monthly service agreement with us, you will not be charged for this work.

Unfortunately, if you are not on a monthly services agreement for our SEO services, we will need to charge for these services.  Re-optimizing a site for speed (that we did not design) could take 40-120 hours per website depending upon what needs to be done. If you are interested in speed optimization services, please contact us for recommendations about work, a price quote, a list of things you can do for yourself, and list of other companies where you can also get quotes from.)

Please take a moment to read our FAQS about this change, how it could impact your website’s performance, what you need to do, and great links for more information about file compression to make your site run faster.

FAQS About Changes in Google’s Page Rank Algorithms and How it Affects our Clients

It’s official: Google has added page load time to its algorithm for ranking pages … and this is bad news for websites sporting heavy flash components, overstuffed with graphics and images, videos, and sites created by lazy web designers (that take coding short cuts.)  It also could spell trouble for the average Joe building their own website (the WYSIWYG drag and click build-a-site services are not likely to meet with Google’s new standards and you will not be able to do much about it if you are not able to hack into code.)

Should you dump your Flash site?  I will answer that with another question:  Good lord, you are not really still using Flash throughout your site are you? The majority of website visitors find it annoying and search engines have always snubbed their noses at Flash.  So fancy up your home page, but please, do not repeat the same flash banners page after page after (now page with a lower rank) page.

Gone are the days where great content and “straight” optimization can get you into Google’s page 1 hall of fame.  Now, web masters will need to optimize Java Scripts, compress stuff and pay close attention to how web graphics affect a page, polish up their PHP perfomance, and work harder to be competitive (by the way, we have been doing this for our own clients websites all along  because we specialize in cleaning up websites.  We also make our websites disability accessible because we believe that will be another ditty incorporated into ranking factors in the future.)

So, read up a little about  Google Code – Page Speed and then call your web designer and SEO company and tell them you feel the need for speed.