Google, Site Speed, Web Design and Balance

Tell me, what are your key website goals?

1. The design should be clean and on-brand
2. There should be some "sizzle", but not too much
3. We want beautiful photography and a bit of animation
4. We should show up #1 for our keywords on Google

Can you have it all?

Google has started to include site speed as a metric in search rankings. Google has made the determination that site speed is a key metric of page value. Certainly Google "walks the walk" - just look at the Google homepage, which has one of the quickest page loading times on the web. But, of course, the Google homepage is incredibly sparse. Can your site really be that sparse?