By Ben Hook

Matt Cutts’ recent announcement that page speed is likely to become a factor seems to have built up a lot of hype around the subject and is now likely to play an increasingly important point on every SEOs checklist.

Google wants your website to be quicker, because a quicker website is better for users. In this day and age it seems like nobody wants to spend more than 3 seconds doing anything in particular. Well, in order to speed up your website Google has provided webmasters with a new addition to the firebug tool called page speed checker. The tool can be found here. The tool will look at you website and analyse it to make recommendations on how you can speed up your website. It’s all broken down easily to help you see what factors you will be able to adjust and what you will need to pass on to your webmaster. Although it is quite specific and goes into details such as javascript compression and browser caching, some of the suggestions are well worth following and will a few tweaks you can often easily reduce your page size by half, which can make a big difference.

Another useful tool to look at is one that was mentioned by Matt Cutts when he spoke at PubCon in 2009 about the state of the index. Have a look at www.webpagetest.org and enter in your URL to start the diagnosis.

Just enter in your details and adjust the setting and it will bring back results of your websites performance. The data is displayed in different ways, but one of the most visually useful is the waterfall chart of the site speed as is displayed below.

The website will also provide an optimisation checklist for your website to help speed up the different factors. Here is an example below.

Make Your Website Quicker for Rankings is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Google software engineer and spam cop,  Matt Cutts, also the search giant’s spokesperson to the SEO world, gave the keynote address for the second day of PubCon South with the announcement of the Google Friend Connect API, which will integrate accounts like OpenID, Google, Yahoo or AOL Instant Messenger to make leaving comments on blogs easier.

It’s not just for blogs, but can be used for forums and other CMS systems, too. The idea is to make it easier to leave comments without having to constantly type in user names and passwords, etc.  Ultimately this will also combat spam.

Matt said that Open Source plugins for WordPress, Drupal and phpBB will be released later today. Matt says since these are Open Source, improvements from the SEO world for these plugins are welcome.

The API will allow you to join web sites so that you don’t have to log in each time to leave comments.

This was Matt’s eighth PubCon, including the very first.

Matt’s blog for SEO and related issues is http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ .  More information on the Google Friend Connect API will be available on his blog later today.

Matt Cutts at PubCon South is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

SMX BASH

Bruce Clay & Danny Sullivan (with attractive young woman – sorry, I didn’t get her name!) at SMX Bash to kick off the conference.

A shot of some of the folks enjoying the SMX Bash to kick off SMX West 2008 in Santa Clara.

Danny said that there was a lot of discussion over the bag to offer at SMX West, but they came up with a winner. Unlike the totes I got at every other conference I have been to, this one is a backpack with several compartments, totally cool and something I will use long after I leave Santa Clara. Congrats to the folks at SMX West!

Day 1

Danny Sullivan gives his take on Search 3.0, blended search, and 4.0, personalized search, in his keynote. Sorry it’s a bit blurry. Taken in the dark with my iPhone.

A pre-session photo of Search Engine Land’s Venessa Fox and Yahoo!’s Sean Suchter.

Danny Sullivan quizzed teams from the big four search engines and a team of search marketing all-stars on search history at SMX West 2008 Search Bowl.

The victorious Google team took the SMX West 2008 Search Bowl trophy, defeating teams from Yahoo, Ask, Microsoft and the SEM All-Stars.

Day 2

Chris Sherman handling the introductions for the keynote speech by Louis Monier on Day 2 of SMX West 2008 in Santa Clara.

Louis Monier, formerly with Alta Vista, eBay and Google, gave the keynote address on the past and future of search at Day 2 of SMX West 2008 in Santa Clara. Monier is currently Vice President of Products with Cuill.

Vanessa Fox, Aaron Wall, Andy Beal and Michael Gray on the panel of SEO and Blogging.

Rand Fishkin (standing), Vanessa Fox, Neil Patel, Barbara Boser and Michael Gray on the SEO and Social Media Marketing panel.

Jill Whalen (right) of High Rankings with friends at the networking event.

The SEO and User Generated Content panel. From left to right – Vanessa Fox, Rebecca Kelley, Andrew Goodman and Roger Montti.

The Google Groove party featured lots of food, drinks, entertainment booths and dancing.

Day 3

The final day of SMX West 2008 in Santa Clara featured a group keynote panel discussing Generation Next: Search in the Coming Decade. Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro (far right) and Chris Sherman of Search Engine Land (second from right) moderated. Panelists (from left) included Brad Goldberg of Microsoft, Peter Norvig of Google and Larry Heck of Yahoo!

Detlev Johnson of SearchReturn moderated the Industrial Strength SEO panel at SMX West 2008.

Panelists for the Industrial Strength SEO session included (left to right) Martin Laetsch of SEM Director, Inc., David Roth of Yahoo! and Marshall D. Simmonds of the New York Times.

The In House SEO Issues panel (from left) included Bill Macaitis of Fox Interactive Media, Paul Bruemmer of Red Door Interactive, William Scully of Siemens, Derek Wheeler of Microsoft and Bob Tripathi of Discover Financial Services.

Jessica Bowman, formerly with Yahoo! and now an SEO consultant, moderated the In House Issues panel.

Danny Sullivan moderated the Linking Q and A panel. Included in the panel were search marketers and representatives from the top search engines – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Ask.com.

From left to right: Nathan Buggia of Microsoft, Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl, Rae Hoffman of Sugarrae Internet Consulting and Danny Sullivan.

From left to right: Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts from Google, Priyank Garg of Yahoo! Search and Peter Linsley of Ask.com.

SMX West 2008 Wrap in Pictures is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

Well, as usual, Google kicked butt and took home the trophy.

SMX West 2008 continues at the Santa Clara Convention Center with a keynote address on Wednesday morning from Louis Monier, Vice President of Products at Cuill, a new search engine attempting to set new standards in the filed of search. Monier is formerly with Google, eBay and Alta Vista.

SMX West runs through Thursday.

SMX West 2008 Search Bowl Winners – Google! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO