It is time to get rid of all those heavy graphics, flash, and unnecessary videos. It’s not like the advice about speed hasn’t been given before but previously the main reason was for better user experience (Who likes waiting for a page to load anyway?). This time though (for those who didn’t listen before…) there is another reason why you should make sure that your web pages load really fast – it is one of the factors Google looks at when ranking pages.

Google has confirmed that they use speed in web search ranking, however, they also emphasize that it is NOT one of the major factors in SEO. According to Matt Cutts it is the good old SEO factors like “relevance, topicality, reputation, [and] value-add” that carries the most weight. In fact, Google claims that right now less than 1% of queries are affected by site speed. Despite this fact it is still a good idea to of course optimize your site’s speed, after all with SEO we all know that every bit counts. In the end, it definitely won’t hurt because it’ll do your SEO good and will surely make your visitors happier with the experience.

As for those that have fast-loading sites already then the bright side is that you have one less thing do, which means you can focus on your reputation and link building and of course come up with even better content.

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Nowadays SEO has become very popular so that more and more people are becoming aware of the need for an SEO (search engine optimizer/optimization firm) to work on their site. However, if you’ve done any SEO you will know that there will be a lot of times when you’ll actually butt heads with web designers and developers. This is pretty normal since it feels to some that SEOs are not really that effective and actually not needed. If communication is properly done though, it will actually yield very good results for your client.

So how can you figure out a way to make things work between the three specialists?

First of all the actual job description should be clear for all three. That means that web designers will do the designing (the look, format and feel), the web developers will do the coding, and the SEOs will give recommendations before and after the coding to ensure that everything is optimized (from copywriting to back end code). As SEOs though you need to know your boundaries and when asking for help from a developer to insert some function it would be best to leave the actual coding to them. It’s their job and they’ll probably come up with a more elegant code than you! So as long as you get the results you want and get all your tracking data then leave the rest to them. You don’t want them telling you how to do your job and they sure don’t want you to tell them how to do theirs.

In cases when a suggestion is made to you, them listen and welcome them if it makes sense because in the end it is not about who doing the best job but if all three are doing the best job TOGETHER for the client.

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