Placement on Google: Factors to consider in 2014

For high rankings on Google in 2014, the speed at which the web pages of your website open is a critical factor in 2014. Apart from age of your site and the traffic it gets, you also need to improve the speed for better rankings. 

Google’s Hummingbird update was more influential than Penguin and Panda in disturbing search rankings. The Hummingbird update influenced the rankings of practically all sites indexed in google. This update takes into consideration the loading speed of a site in determining search rankings along with a few other quality parameters.

Why speed of site opening was made a factor in search rankings?

People responsible for updating Google’s algorithm were aware that there were many sites ranking well on the search engine that did not open in acceptable time. As the internet surfers are an increasingly impatient breed, looking for faster and faster means of getting information, it was an imperative to make speed a factor in search rankings.

As high bounce rate or the rate at which site visitors leave a website as soon as they open it is high for websites that are slow in opening, it is no good ranking them highly. The change in internet surfer behavior could not be ignored for long and thus, speed of site opening was made a factor in determining search rankings. Bear in mind that a slow site is one that does not open within 4 seconds of being clicked.

Google has lived up to its reputation

The search giant has only lived up to its reputation of efficiency in managing search operations by introducing the Hummingbird update. Google’s latest algorithm which takes into account the speed of site opening is appropriately named “Site Speed”. The days of stuffing keywords in Meta tags, body content and even hidden text is gone.

Three factors influence search engine placements in 2014:

1. Age factor, i.e. the time passed since your site was registered and hosted

2. Traffic factor, i.e. the no. of visitors your site gets, and

3. The latest speed factor, already discussed

The age of the site is associated with the trust that a visitor can relate to it, i.e. its credibility. Traffic factor takes into account the no. of visitors, no. of web pages they surf and the total time spent. All these factors combined determine the search ranking of a web page in Google in 2014.

Source: Aboutbrand.net