Page Load TImes and Search Engine Optimization - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 57

Hi, and welcome to the Unknown Secrets of SEO podcast. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Unknown Secrets of SEO. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And this is Paul Hanson, sales manager at eWebStyle. We are glad to have you. I lost my little cheat sheet with all our little cheat information. I don't know. Okay, thank you for joining us for the podcast. Without the cheat sheet, we're nothing. All right, so the first thing we'd like to do is cover a little bit about what we covered last time. And I didn't bring my cheat sheet, so I've got an idea. So you're going to have to listen to last podcast. Go back and listen to podcast number 56. Apparently, though, I was simultaneously drinking Coke and coffee, and Paul was laughing. Oh, from Darren? Yeah, that was our... What's up? To my main man, Darren Bowie. Darren Bowie. And we've got a little bit to talk about with him, because he's done some pretty cool stuff. We should put a link to that on the blog, man. That thing was really, really cool. We'll get to that here in just a second, because it's actually really good stuff. So stay tuned. We'll be back right after this commercial announcement. Hi, I'm Chris Burris with eWebStyle. You can get SEO from us. Our own commercial. All you need to do is go to our website, e-webstyle.com. If you're interested in sending an email to the podcast and getting it read on air and probably answered. So far, we've answered everything to the best of our ability. You can send those inquiries to podcast at e-webstyle.com. And I don't remember who it was. Oh, it was Jaya. Jaya. Jaya. Jaya. He gave us like a, what was it, like a homework assignment or something for our website. You're missing this. This is misspelled. This is wrong. You got the wrong logo. And you should have a Facebook URL. Guess what? We have a Facebook URL. You're right. We have a Facebook URL. So you can

now find us on Facebook by going to facebook.com slash eWebStyle. No dash. That's cool. eWebStyle. You can also find us on Twitter, twitter.com slash eWebStyle. You can also listen to this, excuse me, watch us record this podcast live at 915 Central Standard Time here in Houston. Somewhere in the world. Somewhere in the world. I don't know if you use Google and translate it to your local time frame. All right. So we also want to cover a little bit about news. What do we got here? No, I thought this was pretty interesting. McAfee apologized for crashing. For sucking? Yeah. No. Because sucking would be good compared to what they did. They crashed 10 million computers. Tens of thousands of PCs were crashed because of their latest, like, DAT release. What they did is there is an executable program called SVC Host. I see it all the time because we do some IT and, you know, we have clients who have problems and we get into the task manager and really look at the stuff that's running, the different programs that are running. SVC Host is something that runs pretty much all the time. Apparently, their latest DAT file said, ooh, SVC Host is a virus. Shut down! Their own program? Their program. Said that their own file was a virus. Well, it wasn't their own file, but it was a very common file from Microsoft that's always running. Shut down! Oh, that sucks. So, apparently, they were running around-the-clock IT guys to help people get it all straightened out and they had some fix. So, somebody got fired and their stock price sucks now. Oh, man. You know, we stopped using McAfee. McAfee is one of those, I don't know, maybe stereotypical, from our perspective, a very stereotypical large company. So, there were a couple products that we used for some of our customers on the IT side of things and they, like, in two years, they renamed the product that we were providing to our customers five times. Oh, wow. So, every time we called

up, we're like, I used to be using, it's kind of like when you're bank. Like, you call your bank and it's changed like four times. Oh, yeah. I used to bank with Wells Fargo. I don't think they exist anymore. And then I was with Amogee and I know I'm calling Chase. Is this the right number? Yeah, it used to be bank one. Now, it's this. So, we had that issue and then on top of that, the process of purchasing stuff from them was archaic and ridiculous. Ridonkulous. Ridonkulous. Ridonkulous. That came from Shrek 3, right? I just saw an ad for it last night. I'm going to go watch Shrek 3. I haven't seen it yet. Well, it's ridonkulous. I bet it is. And then I wanted to give you, as I was doing kind of research for the news this morning, did you have anything? I do, but everything I have to talk about is kind of news, but it's kind of SEO. Kind of news. It's SEO and it's kind of news. The one thing I can tell you about is the Facebook like button. Oh, it's up and it's likingable now. Yes, the Become a Fan button is now Like and you will see it outside of Facebook. And just to name a few sites, you'll see it on CNN, MTV, IMDB, Pandora, Univision for the Latino crowd. Ooh, good pronunciation there. ABC.com, ESPN, IndiaTimes.com, TripAdvisor, Fandango, and the New York Times. So, and Facebook is basically taking over everything else outside of Facebook. So, you'll be able to see that everywhere. And I don't know. We'll see how I feel about that. I haven't actually seen it yet, so. Well, so if you don't know what we're talking about, here's an idea. Go to Facebook.com slash eWebStyle and click that little Like button. See what happens. Yeah. See if you like it. Report back to us at podcast at e-webStyle.com. Hey, I pressed the Like button, I'm not liking it so much. Give it a shot. They need a Dislike button, too.

Yeah. Or how about just a Dis button? Yeah. I'm going to diss this article on CNN. Facebook and the Dis button. You need to, like, Dis button. Because I see the Thumb Ups and the Thumbs Down, you know. I don't know. I can't figure out what social media tool that is, but I see, you know, Thumbs Up. Thumbs Down. And that's, like, Dig or, I don't know, specifically Dig, but one of those kind of article followings. Shouldn't there be, like, a Talk to the Hand? Talk to the Hand. Thumbs Up. Thumbs Down. Talk to the Hand. Up yours. Finger up. Finger down. All right. What else do I have here? Google Announce. Oh, I got some. Yeah. This was pretty interesting. Google Announce some changes that they made. This was an interesting article, because. To the Webmaster Tools? It wasn't to Webmaster Tools. Okay. Oh, so we got even more stuff. That's awesome. So it wasn't actually changes to, it was actually changes to Google, and they made, before they started this, I know I sound like I'm rambling, and I haven't even yet begun to ramble. But, as an intro into this article, they were pointing out that, you know, Google is the massive, you know, big behemoth, and they really could potentially rest on their laurels, and they're not doing it, which is pretty cool. You know, we all. Because they'll turn into Yahoo. Yeah. I just diss Yahoo every week, man. I don't even know why. Yahoo, talk to the hand. I mean, I'm just like, I can't, I don't even know, I should stop doing that. They're probably a good, you know, search engine, even though I don't use them. They're, well, aren't they Bing? Yeah, yeah, Bing. So they are a good search engine. They're Bing. I don't use either one. Sorry, guys. So, they talked about these improvements that they're making, and so some of the stuff that they're doing, you know, most of the focus on search engines right now is Google Local, and here's some really cool

examples of, you know, what they're doing with Google Local. You know, already we've had conversations about local sponsored ads and results. If you just go in and type lawyer, at least in the Houston area, it'll actually be the equivalent of typing lawyer Houston and give you local results. And it's expanded. I've seen, I probably saw it on five different categories I searched yesterday. The little yellow highlight on Google Look, I was like, wow, they're really selling this stuff. Yeah. Well, so, here's an example. You go, say you're in the Bay Area. I haven't been to the Bay Area. I'm just one of those trips I'm looking forward to. And you type in BART, right? If you type in BART, at least in this office, you're looking at BART Simpson. If you type in BART in the Bay Area, apparently you would be looking for the Bay Area Rapid Transit System. Transit System. So, if you're in the Bay Area, that's what comes up in the results. That's cool. If you're somewhere else, nothing else. If you're in the Miami area, you type in dolphin. The football team comes up, you know, as one of the results in the SERP. If you're anywhere else, up comes, you know. A dolphin? Yeah. Like a flipper? A non-tuna fish. Everyone's like, save the dolphin. What about the damn tunas? They're cool. We can slaughter tens of thousands of tunas. But let's not kill one dolphin. I never understood that. As soon as the dolphins start tasting good, then hey. So, you're saying you've tasted them and they're not that good? No. I walked right into that one. As soon as they can put dolphin in a tuna roll, I mean, in a sushi roll, then hey, it's done. What country do we need to go to to try that? Somewhere. Somebody's eating some dolphin somewhere. I'm just game, whatever. Just because it's a mammal, hello, we eat cows. Thank you. Aren't they mammals? Tasty and delicious. Oh, so if the cows could swim, then we would want to

save them, not eat them. No, if they could do tricks. Oh, yeah, that's true. They got to do tricks. Yeah, let's be honest, that little squeaky noise that they make when they're farting out of their air hole. That's annoying. Okay, it's annoying. They got to stop. Dolphins got to die. That's a new, we got the diss website and the dolphins got to die. So, Google also did some spelling enhancements. You know, eventually our society will not be able to spell. To spell at all. At all. Yes. Just like, I was thinking, I always say the other day, and this was actually probably like eight years ago. So, the other day I was thinking about how as you're typing in on Word, it's making like automatic adjustments. And that is actually going to affect the English language. Yeah. So, if it's a there or a there that Google lets slide, and even though you're using it wrong, well, let's put it this way. A bug in the grammar checker fixer-upper software in Microsoft could actually result in a significant change in the English language, in the written English language. That's true. It's crazy. And even browsers do your MySpell check now. Well, so what they're doing now is they're taking it to the next level and say, okay, we are, it does some probability analysis and says, okay, we know you probably misspelled this, because 90% of the people who typed this then clicked, did you mean this? So, now that we're at 90%, screw it. We're just going to show it to you. So, they're just, they're correcting your grammar for you. Like, don't even tell you it's a problem. Don't even give you the option. Yeah. There you go. That's what they're doing. So, you know, it's probably pretty good. You know, and, you know, it's probably not good for society in general. It's probably great for Google specifically. Yes. It's a great way to provide great results. In my searching, I came up with, oh, and that came from, no, it didn't. In

my searching, I came across some, I like to give out some good resources. They're going to good resources, SEO news. Very cool. There's actually a do's and don'ts section in SEO news. I'd love to check that out. It's seo-news.com. I saw a little article on link wheels, which was pretty cool. I saw, I can't even read my writing. I think that's why I printed this out. Some on-page tips. So, if we have time, we may even cover on-page tips. And we're doing pretty good. We might get there. Dude. What's that? Oh. These were probably up a while, right? J-Yah. In fact, probably last podcast. J-Yah. J-Yah. J-Yah. Probably last podcast, they were already up. But I didn't realize that iTunes had multiple pages of reviews. So, you actually have to put the next button to see the next review. Okay. And look at that. For those of you watching, there are two reviews on there. Right? So, we got two new reviews. One on the 14th. One on the 20th. And you got to love J-Yah. Because he really, he just. He just. To the point. He's just to the point. To the point. The title is Not Boring. I love it. I love it. You know what, and if I'm looking for a podcast, I'm like, okay, it's not boring. All right. That's worth it. That's worth it. All right. Which, you know. With the shot. The rest actually does say some good stuff, but, I mean, it could be like, absolutely no information and not boring. You should download this podcast. We are not like that. We're constantly giving great information. And, yeah, no, it's a great, it says, this podcast is actually fun to listen to. The hosts, Paul and Chris, make SEO a joy to listen to. Keep up the great work. Thank you very much, J-Yah. My only complaint, and this is in his list of homework stuff, was the microphone. I think we have that fixed. If we don't, let me know. And, J-Yah, if this podcast sucks in

audio, holla at us again. Yeah, please, let us know. He says, even with the bad mic. Now, this is saying something. It is still a five-star podcast. Wow. That's very cool. Thanks. What is that? Five-star. That's what's up. Oh, that is what's up, J-Yah. J-Yah actually quoted Paul his that's what's up in an email. I know that he said this, so that's a... Man, I overused that. I even tell that to my grandmother. I'm like, that's what's up, Grandma. That's what's up, Grandma. She's 90. She's like, what? Yeah, exactly. What's up? Like, what? That's okay, Grandma. You ain't got to get it. The other one is great information and easy style. This is by I Am Learning. That's cool. I like that. That's very cool. Like the casual format and breadth of information, easy to learn, very important things from your podcast. Thanks. That's very cool. That is awesome. We really appreciate you guys. You are listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. That is because you are listening to the most popular... I do. I think it's kind of circular, right? Why are you listening to the most... Because this is the most popular one. Why is it? Because you're listening. This is awesome. All right. What else you got? You got anything? Some more Google news. All right. This is kind of news, but it's also like changes that Google is making that will affect your SEO, your website, your ranking, things like that. A couple of things. I got to make sure that Darren... I'm drinking coffee and Coke at the same time right now. At the same time. Page speed. How quickly your page is long. This pool actually is drinking both at the same time. It's good when the biz mixes with the coffee. It's caffeined up. Page speed. Google is now incorporating into its algorithm. Your page speed, which is basically how it... The actual description is how quickly pages react to each other. How quickly they pull information. Which I translate into being how quickly your

pages load. Yes. Absolutely. The crazy... Go ahead. You know, and that makes perfect sense with one of the kind of mantras that we've been saying, which is your job as SEO is to provide a good experience to the Google user. To the user. So if, even if you've got the most amazing information, great pictures, great links and everything, and it takes a minute for your page to load, you're not providing a good... And they're going to bounce. I mean, everybody knows that by now. So if your pages, your images are too big, your files are too large, or whatever, your site just sucks maybe. People are going to bounce. So Google is now taking in your page speed into account, into its algorithm. Now, this is not as important as the relevance of the page. And I read that on an article, actually, at the Google Webmaster Central blog, and it was at the bottom. It says, this is not as important as the relevance, but it is still important, which kind of goes back to what we keep saying all the time. Content is still king. So you should take this into account. However, I wouldn't say spend hours and hours and hours on it. You're going to spend hours and hours and hours on your content, putting relevant content that's for the user experience. There you go. That provides something for the user experience. Well, and one point about that is there's really only two kind of main things that would typically slow down the loading of your web page. The first one is just that you've got a server that's really slow and not serving information very quickly, which is what a slow server is, and that would be a problem. The other is if you have images that are coming up or flash components or whatever that are really large in size memory usage, then those can also take a lot of time. So those are the things that you can cut back. Some of the most effective websites are just

really simple text. And there's this trend. Well, not even trend. And everyone's moving or has moved to Cascade style sheets, CSS sheets, well, CSSes. And the reason is because you can actually have that information that quickly Google can get to and check out the time of your website. Now, that's an interesting point because as Google's looking at it from a text perspective, it doesn't need to download the images. So they must have changed their spiders so that as they're going through, they are also testing how long is this web page going to take to download in addition. Because it doesn't need to download the picture because it can't do anything. It needs the alt tag. It likes the alt tag off of the picture, and it's not going to download the picture. So that's interesting. I'd say this is probably like a user experience metric that they're tracking because, you know, everybody knows you go to a web page that takes a long time to load, you're going to leave. And actually, on the article on the Webmaster Central blog, it says pages that take a long time to load or sites that take a long time to load, people don't stay there as long. So this is another reason why you want to really work on that. And here are some free tools given from the Google Webmaster Central blog where you can test how quickly your pages load. Page, well, one, there's the Google Webmaster Tools. It has its own little page speed or site. Oh, okay. You go to Google Webmaster Tools, go to Labs, and then go to Site Performance, and it'll tell you about how long your pages will take to load. All right. Here's another tool called the Web Page Test, another tool called the Page Speed. These are not Google. The others, they're just tools. Page Speed, which is an open source add-on to your Firefox browser. YSlow, which is a free tool from Yahoo, as well as Web Page Test. So you can Google all those, and

they'll all give you information about your web page load times your web, yeah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, cool. Great. You provide a great experience. Yes, that was pretty cool. One other thing I saw in the news, Google is actually introducing on the Webmaster Tools a click-through rate. So I printed this out in black and white because I'm fighting with the color printer today. I don't know what its problem is. Okay, hopefully you can see that. And if you can see it over to the right, you'll see click-through percentage. And basically what this says is, if you've seen analytics, you know what this page looks like. You've got your graph that says, you know, your traffic. You know, you have the query. Okay, what word actually did they query to get to your page? You know, the impressions. And then there's the click-through rate and the click-through percentage. Here's another, just another tool that you could use to say, okay, maybe if no one is clicking through to this particular page, you can do some more investigation. Why aren't they clicking through to this page? Maybe it's the description, yeah. Maybe it's, yeah, it could be. Okay, what if it's your homepage? Well, maybe that's a problem, you know. Maybe it's the contact form that you're hoping people to do or the page where people can buy something. That's a problem. So this is just another tool that Google has added to the repertoire that'll keep you in Google Analytics all day, pretty much. And now you can just stay in this piece of software all day and not really get anything done. But I thought it was an awesome tool, just something to you to do some more research on and figure out, hey, what's going on with my website. So take a look at that. What else? Oh, and that's pretty much it. All right, I've got, so let's get to Darren Bowie because we, our teaser earlier and then our, that wasn't all the commercial. I don't know where the commercial stopped and

then we got back into the podcast. Now we're getting back to that teaser information. Darren Bowie, first off, he starts off saying, great podcast today. This was last Friday. Concentrating on the basics, which I remember what we did last podcast. The basics. Yeah, we were concentrating on the basics, apparently. Find it quite amusing that Paul was laughing throughout and Chris was simultaneously drinking Coke and coffee. You know, that's just how it is. That's just, that's just what's up. That's just what's up. Quick question. Keywords. Is there a default language for keywords with Google? I'm going to read this kind of quick. So for example, if you sold blue one-armed widgets, I wonder where you got that from. In Paris, would you have to include the French translation in your keywords, which would be blue widgets, un, on. On. Don't. Arn. Arn. Is Google intelligent enough to automatically translate English to French and that your business is in Paris or would you rather shop down the road that was, had the French translation in the keywords, would they be getting more business? The short answer is absolutely, yes, they would be getting more business. Google does not, at least to my knowledge, does not actually do translations. Otherwise, as you typed in English, you would actually end up with, you know, with French terms in there sometimes and vice versa. So I can't, I can't imagine that they do that. So you definitely want to have a translation if you're targeting, well, certainly if you're in Paris, your website should probably be in Parisian French, which is probably very similar to regular French. I don't know if it wasn't regular French. I thought it was just French. Yes, you're right. And so you should be in French and, you know, that's how you're going to get traffic to your website because French people are going to search in French and they're going to get French results and then you'll be doing well. An interesting point that, I did a little research on this, this is what

we do around here, and a very good point was made is that you really should have a website with the proper designation. So if you're going to do a German website, I believe the extension is .de for Deutschland. And so if you're going to have a German website, you're going to be marketing to German folk, then you actually want to have a domain that ends in the .de. You can still do okay with the .com, but, you know, people tend to want to buy from people close by or people similar or whatever. At least in this country, I could say that. I could definitely believe that. I don't know how people in other countries search. Yeah. Well, and again, I think they're, if you're, if you think you're doing business with somebody down the block, you're typically, you know, you're right. And it could be a difference between here and there. At least here, you want to know that you're close by, so we kind of, maybe, you're right. This is a guy who wrote it in English, so he's probably just extrapolating our own thought processes. Anybody in another country, and we know you have listeners in other countries, because right here is a map of our listeners around the world. From last week. We love that map. Yeah, that's from last week. So, yeah, it looks like there's a few people in the Germany area, in the Parisian-French area. Dude, that's just Europe to me. Yeah. I mean, my geography is so just whacked. Well, plus it's all blocked by... Oh, okay. Because I'm like... I can't see anything. With the little tabs with the numbers on it. This is the one we do know. That's Spain. No reason I know is because it sticks out. So, you guys, in these other countries that are listening, let us know. Like, is it typical also of your users in your local area to be interested in, you know, doing business locally? So, if you're in Germany, do you want... Are you more comfortable doing

business with a website that's a .de or .com? It doesn't matter. Or, you know, maybe it depends on the type of product. If you're looking for a good borscht, you want a .de and not a .com. If you're looking for really crappy virus protection, you don't care. Go to McAfee. McAfee.com doesn't bother you. They're going to sue me for libel. No, it's fact. It's all fact. And I'm not saying it to hurt them. I'm just saying it to express our own experience, which has been unbelievably crappy. You can use that term in a court of law. Crappy. No, unbelievably crappy. It's just the UC talk to the hand. All right. So, that was a great question. And any chance of getting a download link for your spyware software? Spyware software. Well, we use a couple of different ones, actually. Well, we can... I'll send you something there. Darren? We'll hook you up, dog. So, certainly last but not least, so we talked a little bit about Darren's analysis and how Google could literally save the earth. Checking the time here. We're doing good. Could literally save the earth. He did this whole analysis. Ecosia, Ecasia, I can't even spell it. I mean, say it. Maybe I could spell it. It's a website that, for every search, their click-through profits actually go to saving rainforest. So, Darren did a really interesting analysis about how long it would take Google to actually save the entire rainforest. And he's put together a great... I mean, the presentation... Is awesome. It's, like, insanely awesome. Yeah. You know, Darren, let me be honest, man. I was like, this fool did a presentation on it? How cool can that really be? And I checked it out, and I was like... God! Dude, the rain frog. The green rainforest frog. That was awesome. I mean, the whole thing is awesome. Very cool. That was very cool. Very, very cool. I need to check out that tool, because, I mean, it looks like he spent a week on it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I

mean, it's awesome. Man, my hat is off to you, even though I'm not wearing one, Darren. I think that was a very cool thing. And it's cool. They're going to save the planet. Yeah. So, he has a Facebook page and a Twitter page. You can find the Twitter page. It's twitter.com slash google save us, or google help save us. Okay. I think it's google save us. Anyway, if you go to our Facebook page, I've now friended... No, I'm following him on Twitter. Okay. So, go to twitter.com slash ewebstyle. That's if twitter.com slash google save us, or google help save us. If either of those don't work, he gets you to the right place. That's the best way to get to his link. His link is on a website called prezi.com, P-R-E-Z-I dot com. And it's actually a place where you can set up presentations. Set up those presentations. So, I want to check that out, because that was an amazing presentation. And, you know, anything you can do. This is really cool. We can make it like this, almost like a splashy pants grassroots effort, where Google, you know, we can implore Google to save the rainforest. All you have to do... It was less than a year. Yeah. It was like 320-something days. Yeah. So, Google, just put your profits to the rainforest for 327 days, and, you know, save us all. That's cool, man. Darren, I'm definitely going to follow you on Twitter and on Facebook, man. I think that's cool. And I'll support, you know, causes like that. I think that's awesome. And then I just liked the presentation that you did. Yeah, the presentation was awesome. That was very cool. I'd follow you just... Even if it was crap information, that presentation was that good. Yeah, dude, I'm going to steal that. I'm going to send that to people and be like, yeah, this is what I did. I'm just going to tell you now. So, if you see any links out there about Paul's amazing presentation... Yeah, it's going to

be all me. You don't even have to follow the link, because it's going to be your presentation at the end of it. Yeah, there you go. I don't know how we're going to get rid of the... I think he's got like... Bowie.e... DarrenBowie.e... I changed my name. We'll figure something out. It's all good. You're going to change it to Darren Bowie? The U.S. version of Darren Bowie. Right here, next to me. There you go. And that's What's Up. What's Up. All right. This has been another great podcast. You are listening to the most popular SEO podcast on iTunes. This is podcast number 57, which we may have not announced in the beginning and at the end. It doesn't matter so much. Thank you so much for listening. The only reason we are the most popular podcast on iTunes is because you guys do listen. You guys do send in information. Find us on Twitter. Twitter.com slash eWebStyle. Find us on Facebook. Facebook.com slash eWebStyle. Send us an email. Podcast at e-webStyle.com. Woo! I just blew through that. That was awesome. Until next time, this has been Podcast 57, the Unknown Secrets of SEO podcast. Until next time, my name is Chris Burris. And I'm Paul Hanson. Bye-bye for now. Slightly. Slightly.