Google launched a new content analytics report that tells marketers where their web content is lagging and provides actionable suggestions.

Marketers have been warned that site speed is going to become more important for user experience, and thus, search rankings. Now, Google is delivering on that promise with the introduction of Speed Suggestions content analytics reports. Marketers can see where their sites are lagging and identify solutions to speed it up a little.

“Users prefer fast sites. And businesses benefit from it,” wrote Google Analytics Team member Chen Xiao the official blog post announcing the update.

Before marketers resign to the idea that Google is constantly making it harder for them to reach SEO goals, they must take a step back and see that the search engine is leading by example. Google recently introduction of the <a ping> attribute that sped up mobile content delivery by around 200 to 400 milliseconds. But the search engine isn’t alone in its efforts to pick up the pace. Mobile web access speed has increased 30 percent over the past year. More, this tool follows the 2011 release of Page Speed Online, which similarly offered marketers insights on how speed impacted search rankings.

“Users prefer fast sites. And businesses benefit from it.”

Using the new reports, marketers determine how quickly their web content displays in the Overview tab, and then dig into more granular data about Page Timings (which details the time it takes to load each page) and User Timings (the performance of images, videos, buttons, etc.). But the real gold mine (at least until SEOs get a handle on site speed best practices) is the Speed Suggestions portal, which offers prescriptive suggestions for decreasing load times.

Some examples from the post:

– Minifying JavaScript code because it can save bytes of data and speed up downloading, parsing and executing time.
– Optimizing images through compression and proper optimization to save bytes of data.

Google’s Matt Cutts has come out and stated that site speed is an more important ranking signal, and brands that want to assume higher SERP positions should find ways to give shrink load times. It’s crucial that marketers remember we’re living in a fast-paced world that calls for real-time responsiveness even when it comes to content distribution.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.