I’ve written about optimizing your site before, but it was in regards on how to optimize your site based upon your usage.
Now there are other reasons to optimize your site, especially if you use Google’s Ad Words to advertise your business.
A little history
Google Ad Words was one of the first ways which small business owners could advertise on the web. It allowed you to create small ads based upon keywords which people typed into Google. Users could bid on key words to modify the placement of their ad.
If someone typed in a key word you requested, and you bid high enough, your ad was seen.
Enter the Quality Score
Unfortunately, many times the ads shown had only a little to do with the key word entered by the user. So Google added a quality score. The quality score, in combination with your bid, would drive the ads position.
The quality score looks at a variety of factors, such as:
- landing page (the page which the ad leads to) optimized (or about) the key words that were bid on,
- how often is the ad clicked (called the Click Through Rate),
- does the page convert visitors into buyers (this is a minor factor only checked if few clicks are produced)
- and other things.
Just like Google doesn’t tell us everything that goes into their Search Engine rankings, they don’t tell us everything that goes into setting their quality score, but the do sometimes give us some hints.
Page Optimization
The latest hint they gave us deals with page optimization. (learn more here at SEO Round Table) Interestingly, a poor load time for your page will negatively effect your quality score, but a good load time will not improve it.
Google recommends:
- Use fewer redirects.
- Reduce the page size by using fewer, smaller, and more highly-compressed images.
- Do not use interstitial pages.
- Minimize the use of iframes on your landing page.
- Contact your webmaster or web hosting provider to discuss other ways of improving your web site’s load time.
So if noticed a recent drop in your visitors due to lower ad word placement, you might want to consider optimizing your site.
I personally see before too long, page load times affecting the regular ranking of pages as well.
About Walter Wimberly