Did you know the speed and reliability of your website is a massive factor in the stickiness of your site, for both human visitors and search engines?

For the ever demanding customer, website response rates have to be immediate. How long do you spend on a slow page which doesn’t load properly? My guess is not long at all. And neither do your potential customers.

For slow websites the click-away rate is often incredibly high – and what do web users do when they’ve clicked away? They go to the next search engine listing, which just happens to be your fiercest competitor.

Speaking of search engines, many of the top ones use website response rate and server speed as part of the ranking process.

When a website responds more quickly, search engines see the site as more reputable and of a higher quality. These sites are rewarded because they offer a good customer experience and so they’re boosted higher in search rankings.

Fast websites are always located on quick and powerful dedicated servers. The hosting solution will often include more than one dedicated server for increased stability and performance – but that’s for another blog.

When you choose an internet hosting provider make sure you check out the reliability of their hardware. The speed of your server is as vital as other parts of your online marketing campaign.

Meta, keywords, PPC, dynamic content, great design and link building are all successful methods with which to advertise online. But what’s a great campaign if the website it’s based around is too slow to keep the attention of your customers?