A fast website can be the difference of a customer visiting or deciding to look elsewhere. With good cacheing, the second load of the site might be quicker, but it is the first load that counts.

If you already have a website you can check it’s speed here using the pingdom speed test (test from stockholm to get an accurate European result)

If your website takes more than two seconds to load on the first time, then it is time to consider speeding things up. You can do this by reducing image sizes, but sometimes switching hosting is the thing that will make the biggest change.

Are websites are hosted on the fastest hosting I could find and as such all my new sites should now rank in the top 5 to 10% of all sites for speed.

This site loads in under 0.6 of a second and as you can see from the screen shot below has great performance scores.

What is a Domain and how do I choose one?

A domain is your website address. You might have a .co.uk which is good if you are a UK company or a .com if you are international. Choosing the right domain can help with your search results. Including keywords in your domain can be helpful, but you should try not to make it too long or to use something that is too similar to someone elses.