SEO + Site Speed
Topic: Ilya Gregorik's Page Speed Presentation on SlideShare
Thoughts:
Google seems to really care about page speed. It's been widely known for a long time that this is important in terms of SEO, but it seems like it's becoming more important even though Google has shifted away from on-page ranking factors in recent times.
Google recommends the PageSpeed Module that "automatically applies web performance best practices to pages adn associated assets - without requiring that you modify your existing content or workflow." - This is the coolest thing I've heard in a long time, and makes PageSpeed enhancements a no-brainer. (I will definitely be bringing this up at work next week!)
At MozCon this year Matt Peters presented data about ranking factors in 2013 that would indicate that response time is more important than overall load speed.
Using Mean Spearman Correlation (I didn't know what it was either); the data shows that when sites have slower response time that correlates to lower rankings - and that document load time does not impact either way.
According to Ilya's presentation enabling the PageSpeed module improved a site's speed by ~30%
There's a lot of great info about the PageSpeed Module in this presentation; a lot of it may be over the head of most people (myself included in some cases) but it's definitely worth reviewing just to get familiar with the process to bring it up with devs you work with.