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The Need for Speed in Site Performance and CRO: Time is Money!

A few weeks ago I blogged on the need for speed and enabling http compression within IIS and Apache. There have been recent posts on how http compression and crawl rate are related and how speed is now a ranking factor, albeit a small one. While crawl speed is important the effect of site speed on conversion rate can be far more devastating.

Recently we had a client that ran a live chat application that caused a load delay of around 8 seconds. We obviously got in touch quickly to let them know about the delay but they were unsure of the effect that would have. A load delay of this kind won’t affect the load speed for the crawler, (although WMT did pick it up which we will look at a little later) so really we didn’t have a leg to stand on, until we tested conversion rates. (more…)

HTML 5 and SEO – when, what and how?

Almost everyone is touting HTML5 as the flash killer and a new horizon for web development. I wanted to take a slightly closer look at the HTML structure and possible implementations to see the effect on SEO.

When is it coming out?

Initial predictions were late 2010 however the first public working draft deadline was missed by 8 months and it is currently still in the working draft stage at the present time. Ian Hickson now expects the specification to reach candidate recommendation by 2012. It is expected that many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in products well before then though so best be ready for the inevitable questions. (more…)

Need for Speed – Enable HTTP Compression

Since Google mentioned that site speed is now a factor, albeit a smaller one than relevance, SEOs need to look at ways of increasing site load speed. As web professionals we should already be obsessed with site speed as a quick loading site is a first positive impression and one that affects conversion and bounce rate.

One quick win is HTTP compression. Since the majority of the Google crawl is the underyling html, http compression allows significant improvements to be made for both googlebot and the user. Googlebot supports HTTP 1.1 compression. (more…)

Will Bings TV campaign make an impact on search market share?

Microsoft announced on Monday that they are to launch a multi-million pound TV campaign for Bing to challenge Google’s dominance within the UK. The first ad is now available on Youtube.

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The opportunity for Bing

Steve Ballmer recently said that their approach is to “take a little here and there” from the search giant but they are clearly taking the UK market very seriously indeed. Who can blame them, the UK is the only country in the world where online ad spend exceeds TV and with 60% of that currently being spent on paid search the opportunity is immense. (more…)

SES 2010 – Day 2- Brian Eisenberg – 21 secrets of top converting websites

Firstly thanks to @LisaDMyers for inviting me to blog for state of search, really great to be involved in what will be a fantastic resource for all search professionals. But enough about that lets get into improving conversion rate which was a fantastic session at London SES 2010.

Brian Eisenberg (@grok) started out saying “Everyone’s websites suck, average conversion rates are about 3%, and they haven’t gone up particularly over the last 10 years. Technology has advanced so why not conversion rate?” that’s a pretty compelling argument especially given the amount of money companies spend on attracting traffic. (more…)

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