Well, once again I find myself wondering what I can do to improve the rankings for websites in the search engines. Me and several of my friends call it ‘the Google dance’. That’s when you think everything is fine with your site and then you notice that your site does not show up well enough in the Google Search results. So you start to adjust here, tuck there, and hold your breath and pray that your efforts were not a waste of time.
And that’s where I am with my sites all the time. I have this one friend name Larry that has me taking care of his websites and search engine optimization. He’s a gold buyer and coin dealer in Reno Nevada. Larry is an old timer and he’s not too much into computers, but he knows that being found in the search engines is make or break for his business. He has a lot of competitors and the entry bar into his business is pretty low. So he needs to rank and rank very well.
Originally, Larry was paying YelloPaiges (purposely misspelled) over $3000 per month for his web presence. He was going broke and they had him over a barrel because his phone line was tied to the ads. If he didn’t keep paying them – they could have shut down his whole business.
Then I stepped in. For a few hundred bucks a month, I maintain and optimize his site. He gets more leads than he was getting from the colored book company and I’m saving him $3000 a month! So now Sierra Coin and Reno Gold Buyers is rocking without the high costs.
Then Google adjusts their program. Reno Gold Buyers site sits on someone else’s server and it is a fricking dog! The web pages crawl open and Google has taken notice. I hate it with a passion. Now, the person hosting his site is sort of a friendly competitor, so I don’t want to give her too much grief, but she doesn’t even have a clue how slow her server really is.
So now, in this little window between Christmas and New Years, I’m working on moving it to my faster server. One where I can control processes such as compression and minifying CSS.
Just take a look at how this thing dogs:
Ugh! I’m pretty damn sure Google hates this speed. Not to mention how the website visitors must feel when they get dragged down to these speeds.
So the fix is on – I’ll let you know how it goes.