Fast loading pages aren’t important for just web rankings – if a page is loading slowly or times out, how many will hang around to wait for the page to load?

Whatever the reason for a slow loading page – antiquated server, extra coding, improperly formatted images – having one (…or several) will certainly cause you to lose visitors and more importantly, customers. To see how important this is to the average web user, check out this page load graphic courtesy of Blue Compass Interactive and our friends at Planet Ocean.

So how can I speed up my page’s load time? And what’s the recommended page load time for both search engines and web users?

For the best results, it’s recommended all pages on your website load within three seconds.

If your pages are taking longer to load, the following 5 tips will help optimize page load time and ensure your rankings (…and customers) will not slip by the way side due to slow loading pages.

1. Use an image editing program that provides a “Save for Web” setting

Images are by their very nature pretty big. If your webpage is loading images as-is it can dramatically lower your page load time. A “Save for Web” setting will export your image in a compressed file size. Also, don’t forget to specify the original file size in your HTML code (i.e. 500 pixels x 300 pixels). Not specifying these dimensions means your web browser will have to work harder to display the image, thus increasing page load time dramatically.

2. Keep HTML coding to a minimum

Many webmasters, perhaps you, use WYSIWYG (…what you see is what you get) type HTML editors. These programs though add a lot of unnecessary code to your page and thus, slow page load time down tremendously. Examples of unnecessary coding include “comment” lines and “date stamps” to name a few. One program you can use to compress your coding is the GZip HTML Compression tool.

3. Consolidate Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) and JavaScript

These days, every page has at least one cascading stylesheet (CSS), third-party application or JavaScript file to load before the page will function properly. This can slow even the smallest of web pages. Therefore, it’s best to force the browser to fetch as little external information as possible. Consolidate your CSS sheets down to one if possible and embed them at the HEAD of the individual page.

4. Control how your site content is ‘cached’

Demarking and controlling how your site’s content is cached by the search engines will dramatically speed up your page load time. How you do this depends on the type of server you’re hosting your site on.

For an Apache server, you can physically adjust the “Expires” or “Cache control” header attributes. The process for a Windows server is similar and involves manipulation of the HTTP ‘client cache’ element. And if your site is hosted through WordPress, download and install the WP Super Cache plug-in which serves up static HTML pages to the majority of your audience and dramatically boosts page load time.

5. Reduce the amount of cookies

Consider downloading and installing a free ad-on like View Cookies for Mozilla Firefox to monitor the amount of cookies being exchanged between you and your site’s visitors. Review these cookies and see which ones you can reduce in size or eliminate altogether. If you can’t recognize the cookie, then you probably don’t need it. The fewer cookies your page has, the faster it will load.

As we always say, one ranking factor alone won’t determine the success or failure of your site in the search engines. With that said, on-site technical improvements are a sound way to securing long-term rankings. Therefore, if you find your site’s load time is a bit lagging, make sure you pay close attention to the above metrics.

But considering the fact many websites contain hundreds, maybe even thousands of pages, it can be a daunting task regardless of how careful you are. Proper planning helps ensure it all goes smoothly…no or very little planning can turn it all into a big nightmare.

Pages can get mixed up, deleted or otherwise not be available on the new site, which can end up costing your company thousands of dollars.

To avoid this calamity, you need to consider the following factors before, during and after. Continue reading to learn about all of these considerations you need to keep in mind when redesigning your website.

Before doing anything though, you need to get some baseline information and backup your old site just in case something goes awry. Load time, conversion rates, search rankings, bounce rates for your top landing pages and a list of important inbound links is information you need to have in-hand before you even get started.

Once you have all of this, it’s time to start your site re-design. Taking the following 34 steps during this process will ensure it all goes smoothly and you begin reaping the benefit of a new website as quickly as possible.

Prior to New Site Launch

1.       Have the old site available to put back online immediately if something goes wrong.

2.       Retain your existing URL structure if possible so you can minimize impact on search rankings.

3.       Address methods to eliminate duplicate content to prevent it from occurring in the first place.

4.       If you’re unable to keep existing URL structures, have a plan on how you will handle switching to the new file structure, including 301 re-directs, updating links, marketing materials and PPC ads.

5.       Keep a copy of the old site on-hand just in case.

6.       Use a link checker utility like Xenu to scan your new site and find any broken links.

7.       Take a moment to review titles and meta descriptions on your new site.

8.       Before launching, check your new site manually using multiple web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome). Many differences exist between these browsers.

9.       Update XML and HTML sitemaps so search engines can easily crawl your new site.

10.   Verify all web forms and other interactive features are working properly.

11.   Protect your site from competitors and search engines during development. The best way to accomplish this is to develop the site locally and internally to your firm.

12.   Review existing RSS feeds

13.   Verify your new site will work properly with traffic tracking codes like Google AdWords and Google Analytics.

14.   Develop a plan to add current analytics tracking to your new site before launch.

During new site launch

15.   Did you back up your old site? If not, now is your last chance.

16.   Update your .htaccess and robots.txt files so any 301 redirects will work properly.

17.   Be sure AdWords and PPC campaign pages are updated and working properly.

18.   Update payment gateways or other important sites if your server’s IP address changes.

19.   Test all email address and make sure they’re working properly.

20.   Remove any temporary no-index tags, robots.txt and be sure any other robot control tags are updated in case you had something blocked off during the development process.

After new site launch – catching any mistakes

21.   Run your spider/link finder once again to catch any broken links you may have missed.

22.   Test your new site’s load time. Google has claimed load time is now a big ranking factor.

23.   Make double-sure you put tracking codes/scripts on your new pages

24.   Check server logs for any 404 or other server errors.

25.   Look at your Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster accounts to see if the search bots are spotting any errors.

26.   Update any broken inbound links at the source of the link or through a 301 re-direct.

27.   Verify PPC ads are still correct.

28.   Make sure your XML sitemap is up-to-date.

29.   Compare bounce rates for the new site vs. the old one.

30.   Monitor how newly indexed (…or re-indexed) pages are ranking.

31.   Now that your site is live online, test it once again with all web browsers and even a mobile smartphone if you’re able to.

32.   Manually test all web forms and other interactive scripts.

33.   Check where your site is in the search results after the search engines have indexed it once again.

34.   Go to Google and Bing and type “site:yourdomain.com” in the search bar to see if the number of pages indexed has improved over your previous numbers.

Taking these all important steps helps ensure your site transition goes as smoothly as possible. Also, they help you spot any errors and allow you to make those corrections before any negative consequences arise.

Double, perhaps even triple check your site to make sure everything is working properly. If not, you’re certain to suffer devastating setbacks in the search engines as well as eroding good will of your site visitors.

Remember what Thomas Edison once said – “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”

Before you start the redesign and all throughout the process, it’s important you make your SEO strategy a top priority. First, you don’t want to lose the rankings and traffic you’ve built up to now but you also will not want to miss the more targeted visitors you will get when your new and improved site is up and running.

Ignoring the following 6 steps when redesigning your site will put your online position in peril. So if you’re looking for quality web design services, be sure they understand the following before hiring them.

1.  Keep content/keyword rich pages near the top of your site’s hierarchy

Search engines are quite meticulous when seeing how pages within your site are linked together. They use this form of internal link popularity to determine a particular page’s place within your site’s hierarchy. Pages linked from every other page are given more weight than one’s linked from only a few.

In light of this fact, you should be sure your content and keyword-rich pages are placed high within this hierarchy. If a particular page was bringing in a lot of traffic before, don’t bury it too deep within the site.

2. Categorize content by niche markets and avoid duplicate content

Online searchers generally ask questions when initially looking for solutions to their problems or answers to their questions. Therefore, the more ways you can categorize your information for these different issues – or target markets – the better.

Categorize all of your top-level pages to reflect this fact and make it clear your products and services can address their problem. And be sure – regardless of how someone finds a certain bit of information on your site, be sure they end up at the same URL to avoid any duplicate content issues. For example, if a specific product can be listed as both a product and a service, place the same URL in both categories so regardless of how someone views it, they will end up at the same place.

Courtesy of cool-photos.com

3. Stay on top of URLs if transitioning to a new content management system (CMS)

If you’re going to use a new content management system for your site to help better administer it, be sure you place 301 redirects for any URL you have to change. Since search engines will take some time to index new URLs, you want to be sure you maintain your position in the search engines and current traffic levels.

If you must, you should re-direct your top-level pages at minimum. Doing so will quickly pass the link popularity of the old URLs to the new ones – and prevent prior visitors from seeing a 404 error/not found message when they come back.

4. Code links with a navigation menu in a search friendly manner

It’s important you code all links within your navigation menus in a search friendly manner so they can be crawled and pass on those benefits to your rankings position. Many graphic designers don’t realize this – some Flash graphics and DHTML menus are invisible to the search engines, causing them to not receive the internal link popularity they should receive.

Therefore, make sure all navigation menu elements are coded with CSS that is visible to search engines. Avoid drop-down box links as the main form of navigation and ensure all content can be reached through their own dedicated links.

5. Be sure your new CMS system allows you to customize HTML elements

While automation may seem nice for HTML elements like titles, meta tags, headers, URLs and alt attributes for headers, it’s imperative your new CMS system allows you to customize these. There should ideally be no limit to the number of characters for each of these elements but do remember, the search engines have limits you should stay within.

6. Avoid session IDs and other tracking links

Tracking visitors on our websites gives us insight into what works and what doesn’t. For ranking purposes though, this can be a double-edges sword. It’s best to avoid these types of internal elements but if you must, be sure the clean URL is the only one given to the search engines. If not, the search engines will duplicate the same page over many URLs, splitting your link popularity.

If your new CMS system has tracking elements inherit within it, be sure you use a canonical link element to maintain one URL for every page of content.

Sharing these “secrets” with your potential developer may make them feel you’re usurping their knowledge and authority but heck, it’s your money, so be sure whoever your hire has all of the know-how to make your site work. Many professional graphic designers are not SEO experts per se.

They may create some very nice looking websites and marketing materials but it won’t matter too much if it can’t be found.

Caffeine is a change in the index, or infrastructure of Google. Unlike the “Mayday” update, it’s not changing the algorithm in any way…it’s simply changing how sites are indexed on their servers. Since content on the web is blossoming and getting more complex, Google felt it needed its index to evolve with it so it could return the most relevant, up-to-date results to its searchers.

In a nutshell, the following are the main things you need to know about Caffeine:

• It’s NOT a ranking change. You shouldn’t see any major ranking changes from this
• It DOES change how Google indexes pages – speed, scalability and how deep they can get into a site
• It should now deliver fresher results
• Search results should go deeper over time

Before, the old index consisted of several layers, each of which was updated at different times and frequencies. When refreshing a layer, Google would have to analyze the entire web which caused a delay between when new content was discovered and when it was made available to a searcher.

With Caffeine, Google will now analyze the Internet in small portions and continuously update the search index on a global basis. As the spider finds new pages or information, it can automatically be added to the index, making it available immediately.

Caffeine can index pages on an enormous scale – its server takes up over 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database. It adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes a day. To compare, you would need 625,000 of the largest I-pods to store that much information.

As with anything, there is some controversy as to the effects of this. Some comments on different forums discussing the new infrastructure claim Google is making a smart move, staying ahead of the bell curve when it comes to the advancement of websites.

However, others worry about spam and how this could be a great boon to spammers. Since Google is striving to post the most current results, spammers could take advantage of this by copying other sites’ content. Some have even said this could lead to Google’s demise and only gave them 6 months!!

Either way, we will stay on top of how Caffeine is working and its effect on websites and web searchers. If it is a bad move on Google’s part, we will certainly witness a decline in their search volume.

In the mean time, see Google’s spam chief at the recent SMX Advanced conference explaining Caffeine in this video below.

So what is Google Caffeine?

Caffeine was formerly kept secret by Google and only limited details were released to the public last August. The search engine characterizes it as the “next-generation architecture for Google’s web search.” It appears this new architecture includes crawling, indexing and ranking changes and that it’s not simply an addition or change to their existing infrastructure but rather a complete overhaul.

Based on Google’s announcements regarding Caffeine, we can best surmise that this new infrastructure may include ways of crawling the web more effectively, determining reputation and authority and returning relevant results quicker…however, Google’s spam chief Matt Cutts says the changes are “primarily in how we index.”

Most of these changes do not affect the user-interface (what you see) very much but you may have noticed some subtle changes in a search engine results page in the last few months. Take this search – “buffy the vampire slayer” for example – and how it returns video and news results midway down the page.

If we use the existing infrastructure, Google displays news results at top, video in the middle and images at the bottom.

Google’s new infrastructure has undoubtedly caused quite the stir in the online world, with webmasters and SEOs scrambling to try and understand how this will impact their rankings…along with many a speculative blog post about how to best optimize to the new changes.

In the end though, it still comes down to having the right foundational elements – a crawlable site infrastructure and compelling content – maintaining these will certainly keep you ahead of the curve.

We’ll keep you posted on Caffeine and its effects on optimizing websites for the search engines…in the mean time, keep creating compelling content for your target audience and be sure your site’s architecture is setup so search engine spiders can effectively crawl your site.

No reason for despair if this happens to you. Rather, look at it as a process of discovery as to why you’re site’s dropped…you may be surprised at what you find out.

Here’s a method you can use to aid in your quest of finding the source of your problem and getting right with Google…watch the video below for more details.

Are you sure it’s a penalty?

There’s a good chance that it’s not even a penalty per se but more of a technical issue. Maybe there’s a crawl problem or you forgot to include keywords in some of your content. Check and see if Google is indexing your pages by typing a keyword phrase, a colon then your web address (keyword:http://www.yoursite.com/) and see if they’re indexing your pages.

Try and identify whether you’re experiencing a rankings drop or a traffic drop…doing that will help you determine what you can do to fix the problem.

Are any links you have causing the problem?

Links are big part of building rankings in the search engines so it stands to reason something could go wrong and cause a drop in rankings or traffic. There are a couple of possible reasons for this.

The first is a more outright penalty for having links from sites that make it look kind of obvious that you’re employing spammy/black hat type practices. They frown upon this and you can consider it to be more of a direct penalty.

On the other hand, you have many sites linking to you that were acquired legitimately through Google’s eyes that may not be valued as much or not at all for whatever reason. Maybe they’re engaging in bad linking practices or another site linking to them is. Either way, the link value you were getting isn’t there anymore so it will be prudent to get rid of that link to try and remedy the problem.

Getting right with Google

Once you’ve identified the problem, now you need to get back on the right side with Google’s spam team. Getting back in is usually based on three factors:

1. Severity of the penalty or mistake
2. Is this the first time or is it a repeat problem?
3. Are you a brand name or little guy?

The more severe the error the tougher it will be getting back into Google. If you’ve engaged in any spammy/black hat practices for example you will have a harder time getting back in. First timers are given a little more leniency than repeat situations. And of course, size matters in this world so if you’re a big brand name site like Sony, Walmart, etc. you will have an easier time.

But if you’re a little guy and it’s the third time on a pretty bad penalty, you’re probably toast…you’re really at the mercy of the Google gods so the best thing to do is when you contact their spam team, be completely honest about any mistakes, etc. and what you discovered as your problem.

It’s possible they may ignore you and at some point, you will need to decide what to do. If you go a couple of months and you’re not getting anywhere with Google after you’ve discovered your problem, consider redirecting your site through a 301 redirect and starting over.

As you see, there are many reasons why you could be experiencing trouble with your Google rankings…watch the video for more details and other technical reasons as to why.

At the time, Google added site speed to their Webmaster tools utility, comparing your site against others in your niche in terms of how fast they load. At that time, Google said it would be adding this factor to its algorithm in the coming months.

Well that day has arrived so now we can begin to get a clearer picture on how this will affect rankings. Will faster loading sites enjoy rankings over another site that may take a second longer to load?

According to various forums on the topic that have been brewing through today since the implementation of this factor was announced last Friday, this new ranking factor should hardly impact anyone except for a few specific queries (that we don’t know about right now unfortunately). In fact, the change has been in play for about 2 weeks so you would know by now if page speed is affecting your rankings.

Google will measure page speed two ways: (1) How a page responds to the Googlebot and (2) Load time as measured by the Google Toolbar.

Different posts on WebMasterWorld, DigitalPoints and Google Webmaster forums confirm that this isn’t a major factor in the over 200 elements that make up Google’s ranking algorithm. However, there are some good tips in there if you think you’re rankings are being affected by this change.

There are literally millions of websites circulating the Internet with several who are in the same industry or niche you’re in. They all want to get to the top of the search engines, knocking you out of their way in the process.

So if you have accomplished the feat of achieving top rankings in the search engines, you need a strategy to keep you there. Continue reading to learn 5 strategies you can employ to maintain your top position in the search engines.

1. Increase link-ability

Success in SEO depends a lot on having great content with lots of inbound links. But getting to #1 isn’t an excuse to take it easy. You need to maintain your ranking page’s link-ability if you’re going to stay on top.

Some ways you can encourage links to your site include: improve your site design, continue building good content and temporarily remove advertising. Too much advertising on a webpage can potentially turn people off.

2. Find new links on your own

Look for additional linking opportunities by guest posting, article marketing and good old fashion asking. If you’re at the top for a certain competitive keyword, you can leverage your position to get additional links.

3. Get more clicks and conversions by tweaking site elements

Getting to #1 isn’t the sole goal of online marketing and SEO. You may have a page that’s ranked #1 for a certain keyword but it won’t stay there long if you’re not getting enough people to click on your site. Tweak title tags and metatags to draw attention but don’t do it too much since search engines take time to adjust to these changes. Doing this too much may cost you your #1 position.

This is also the time you should test different things on your homepage to see what works better in terms of conversions. For instance, is a blue “buy” button better than a green one?

4. Expand keywords for more ranking opportunities

Another way to maintain your #1 ranking is to expand the scope of keywords on your ranking page. This will dilute your keywords somewhat but it shouldn’t affect your position if you follow the tips outlined in step #1 and #2.

Let’s say your top keyword is “green clocks” – add “green clocks in California” for more specific searches. The majority of searches are done using long-tail keywords so if you narrowly focus on one keyword, you may lose your #1 ranking as fast as you got it.

5. Future proof your SEO

Something that may work today may not work tomorrow. Google is always changing their algorithms based on new trends and technology. You need to stay ahead of the curve by knowing what’s going on out there and adjusting your site accordingly.

In addition to good content and quality links, Google and others are starting to also focus on: traffic/user engagement, branding and social media.

Employ these kinds of strategies when managing your websites to improve the chances of holding on to your #1 ranking in the search engines. Learn more about these 5 strategies to maintaining #1 search engine rankings here.

While Microsoft’s newest search engine has been gaining market share in online search since its inception, webmasters and SEOs have had to deal with some glitches. Here are two of the latest.

A few days ago, webmasters were reporting in Bing’s forum that the search engine’s webmaster tools utility was not accepting URLs with hyphens in them. This caught my attention since our URL for this blog has a hyphen along with our SEO firm’s homepage (http://www.seo-advantage.com/).

Fortunately for our homepage, if you enter the URL without a hyphen, you end up at the same place.

Technicians at Bing are working on the problem and may have resolved it already.

The other glitch causing headaches for webmasters and SEOs is the crawler for the search engine is crawling a page twice – once for its compressed version and the other time for the uncompressed version.

Comments in the Bing forum complain that this is a waste of bandwidth and defeats the purpose of HTTP compression. An older thread from WebMasterWorld discusses image indexing by search engines and that possibly being a cause of the problem.

While Bing says they are working on the problem, there is no confirmation on when it will be resolved.

Stay tuned for any further updates to these issues or any technical issues with Bing.

I’ve seen it a million times. It’s one of the most common mistakes made by webmasters and companies when it comes to SEO. They spend money on an aggressive 6 month link building campaign. Their site starts ranking, the traffic starts flooding in. The campaign expires, and everything appears fine. But then a few months later rank starts to drop. They’ve lost momentum.

Sometimes it takes months, sometimes years, but the fact of the matter is: If you don’t maintain your link building and SEO efforts on a monthly basis, sooner or later, some one will start to compete and take your rankings away.

Now this doesn’t mean you have to constantly spend thousands month in and month out on link building alone. Once rank has been achieved, in many cases you can scale back to maintenance level link building.

For most moderately competitive niches, a few smart moves here and there can help you hold your rank.

The Digg-able Post
Creating a post that is intended for the Digg crowd is a great way to get noticed. If you get noticed enough you’ll be featured in the “what’s hot upcoming section”, usually this is enough to gain some back-links and keep your site fresh in Google’s eyes.

The Information Is Endless
Use various keyword tools to help brainstorm new ideas for pages based on what people are searching for. If you keep adding information that people want, 2 things happen. First and foremost, you build subscribers and gain new readers. You also hold the attention of the SERPS. There is nothing Google loves more than a fresh website that updates frequently. If you couple that with some amateur keyword research for your titles, you will get traffic.

Blogging Works
Yes, using a free platform to maintain a blog does work. People read blogs. Encourage your employees or colleagues to start blogs and ask them for a back-link. Start your own free blog on one of the various free blogging platforms. Update it 3 times a week with fun relative content. Don’t forget to link back to your main site.

Stay Social, But Don’t Over Do It
Building Facebook and Twitter networks is a fantastic way to keep people coming back to your site. When you keep traffic up, you’ll hopefully be earning back-links. Don’t forget to update your social networks on any good news or fresh content.

A word of caution: Don’t overdo it! No one likes spammy messages cluttering up their social feed. So stay fun, relevant, and friendly.

When In Doubt, Reach Out
Contacting other webmasters in your vertical and participating on their blogs and forums is a great way to keep attention focused toward your site. Remember, offering insight and humor are 2 very easy ways to become a respected voice in any community.

The fact of the matter still remains. Back-links are crucial for search engine rankings. The best way to build proper back-links is by networking and interacting with people.

It’s a vicious cycle. The more people who visit your site, the greater your chances are for acquiring back-links. Once you’ve spent the time and money building your SERP rankings, and gaining momentum, it is crucial to keep up with monthly SEO maintenance.

Here’s a mantra for you: Stay involved, stay fresh, stay connected, and hold rank!

Jake Walker is an avid blog builder and search engine optimization specialist. You can read his webmasters journal at www.blogmason.com