Web Page Load Speed is one of the most important factor that Bloggers and Webmasters must take care of to deliver a good user experience.Blog loading time has both direct and indirect impacts on search engine ranking.Previously Google didn't include Blog Speed in their Algorithm.On April 9th 2010,Google incorporated site load speed into its ranking algorithm.Matt Cutts explained that though a website speed will be paid great attention in all future ranking criteria but it will still weigh less compared to important factors like relevance,quality, reputation etc. Leaving search engine ranking factor blog load speed also has a direct impact on your traffic.Most of the visitors decide whether to stay on your blog or hit close button in the first 3 seconds.That means if your blog doesn't load properly in this 3 seconds you are going to loose almost 50% of visitors thereby increasing your blog bounce rate.
How To Check Speed Of Your Blog?
There are many tools to check the speed of the blog or website but Google Speed Test Tool is the best tool which I recommend to all bloggers.
- Go To Google Speed Test Tool.
- Enter the website url and check the speed.
- We scored 90 out of 100 which I feel is not a great score,we are still working on improving the speed of our blog.If you scored anywhere between 80 to 90 then you should take this seriously and work cutting down the extra scripts,images,flashes etc.
Advanced Users can use Web Page Test Tool.
Tips To Reduce The Blog Loading Time:
1.Compress Images before you Upload:
This is the one of the most important factor when coming to blog loading time.Most of the newbies upload the images without compressing them thereby loosing a great way to reduce the blog loading time.Wordpress users can straight away use plugins like Smushit to compress images as soon as they upload image to text editor.Blogspot users have to use a third party service to compress images before uploading them.I personally recommend you to use Yahoo Smushit and Puny Pny.
2.Resize and Give Proper Dimensions to Images:
After you finish selecting images for the post that you are going to publish ,you have to properly resize the image.Use Cropp.me to resize images online.Give proper dimensions to fit images in the body of the post.
3.Avoid Too Many Javascripts/Flashes/Plugins:
Remove unwanted Java scripts,Flashes and Plugins.More the number of Javascripts and Plugins more will be the blog loading time.In case of wordpress users prefer manual coding than using ready made plugins as the plugins will increase your blog loading time.
4.Decrease The Number Of Social Share Buttons:
Now again these social sharing buttons are javascripts hosted by third party servers ,so it takes some time to load thereby increasing your blog loading time.Reduce the usage of social sharing buttons on blog.If your major traffic comes from search engines then use very less social sharing buttons.
5.Don't Use Image Background:
Few people use image background for their blogs.If you are one of them then kindly remove the image and keep a simple background.A background Image repeats itself horizontally and vertically which is responsible for 50% slow load time. Just remove the background image and feel the difference. To remove a background image simply find this CSS code inside your template.
6.Show Not More Than 5 Posts Per Page:
More the number of posts per page more the time taken for loading.Don't use too many or too less posts per page.5 posts per page will give a good user experience.
7.Reduce Advertisements:
Advertisement banners are coded with Javascripts which reduces the loading time of the blog.Use only reliable Advertising networks like Google Adsense,Infolinks,BuySellAds etc.Few networks like Adbrite,Technorati Media have a good payout but effects blog loading time a lot.Try to place ads below the fold to increase blog loading time.
8.Avoid Linking To Blog Directories:
Linking to blog directories not only reduces the loading time of blog but also Google will penalise such blogs with links in the footer(Google Penguin and Panda).
9.Reduce External Linking:
External linking especially using banner images or scripts provided by third party services increases the blog loading time.Always host the images on your own server.Blogspot users create a static page to upload images to use on your blog.
10.Wordpress Users Use WP Super Cache Plugin:
WP super cache wordpress plugin is one such plugin which helps you optimizing your database by generating static HTML pages.This way when any page is requested from your blog, static page will be served instead of processing all PHP scripts thereby reducing the blog loading time.
Conclusion:
Currently web page speed is not a major factor of search engine ranking but in future the speed of web page has a prominent role in SEO. So one must definitely take care of Blog Load speed.
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