It’s no surprise that the load speed of your website has a significant impact on your ranking position. Google has been shouting that from the rooftops and the blog sphere has been happy to echo their message for good reason.

And if pleasing Google isn’t enough incentive, then the startling relationship between site speed and conversion rate should get your attention. No one wants to buy something on a slow and non-responsive website, and they typically don’t.

There is a well quoted statistic about speed. KISSMetrics reports that 47% of users expect a page to load within two seconds. So, if your site takes more than two seconds to load, chances are they have moved on – probably your competitor’s site.

To that end, Google now rewards fast loading sites and punishes slow ones.

Faster sites attract and keep customers on your site longer. When your site is optimized for load time, you have consistent load times across all devices. Mobile users are even more speed sensitive than desktop users. And, most importantly, faster sites provide a better overall customer experience and encourages them to come back and often.

Ways to speed up your site include:

Keep it simple. We ask a lot of our sites and things can get jumbled over time which can slow page loads. Combining style sheets can help ensure everything is consistent and works together.

Compress all that great content. We are adding more and more content to our sites in various forms including video. Make sure to compress large pages to help them load faster.

Utilize the cash tool to store necessary elements on a viewer’s hard drive.

Avoid too much of a good thing. We all want our sites to be visually engaging. Make sure all those graphics are optimized and not clogging the system. And we’ve gone plug-in crazy. If you have a WordPress site, check the number of plug-ins. They may be causing trouble.

And, the problem may not be solely on you. Check with your hosting service. Are they doing all they can to help site load speed?

This is not a one and done fix. Site speed needs to be constantly monitored. So keep an ongoing dialog with your SEO about the current load time of your website and how to go about continuing to improving that number.