Is Your Site Loading Speed Too Low? Magic Plugin Speeds Your Site in Seconds!

byJoyKabuga

115 followers

5 years ago

Low site loading speeds can injure your google ratings. This typically happens because google uses an algorithm to rate your site based on user interaction. So if users stay longer on your site, your rating goes up. But what happens if your site doesn't load quickly? The typical web user will get impatient and just navigates to another site. You lose your visitors, and worst of all, your google ratings plummet.

Now, I am no techie. In fact I know very little about websites. As I said in my earlier blog, I am just happily bumbling along, trying to learn as much as I can. But I can now tell you with authority (tongue in cheek), that out of desperation, I have stumbled on a wordpress (WP) plugin that just ups the game by accerelating site speed in just seconds.

I am a premium subscriber at Wealthy Affiliate (WA). And with my premium subscription I get to enjoy great stuff, such as accerelated website speeds. Hey, I even cranked mine up a notch higher and set it to extreme. But even then, my site speeds remained dismally low. So low that I hit the red zone of 30% on all my pages especially on mobile.

Google Insights told me what the problem was. Something about CSS and Javascript and HTML below some viewline or something. I kind of understood this part. But when I clicked on a resolve link I was greeted by an even more complicated way to solve the problem. Did I mention that I am no techie? I stared at my screen in frustration, sure that I had just hit a dead end. I mean, the whole thing just looked and sounded like alien language to me!

I scratched my head absent-mindedly and was just about to shut down, when a message from JohnMks suddenly popped onto my screen. One thing I love about WA is the Live Chat and Help Centre functionality. This typically means that WA users can interact with each other on any topic, much like social media.

This is an excerpt from JohnMks message, "Hey Joy! I hope things are going well on your end and hopefully, you're seeing some great progress. If you ever feel stuck on anything or you feel like you need a quick question answered, don't forget that I still exist, lol." I looked at the message in shock, then almost as suddenly, I felt relief wash over me. Of course, this is just the kind of support one would expect from WA. A community of the most helpful people I have ever come across.

Anyway, I wasted no time and quickly replied to his message. I mean, why would I waste time when God had seen my confusion and literally come to my rescue? I told him that I was experiencing problems with my site speeds. He responded equally as fast and told me to use an AMP plugin. That may boost your speed, he said. Now, for the life of me, I had never heard of AMP before and I didn't even know where to start. I scratched my head again. I seem to be doing quite a bit of that today. I am not about to trouble this gentleman further, so I shut down my computer. Off to things I understand!

Several days later I am in the WA site and scratching my head again. I have just rememberd my site speeds are very low after conveniently forgetting the fact. Now where do I start? I am just about to log off when I get a pop up that one or more of my WP plugins need updating. I navigate to my site and click on update. I casually glance at the menu and I suddenly get a brainwave. Of course! All I need to do is search for AMP under plugins.

I quickly do so and voila, a whole list appears of AMPs and Lazy Loads. I scan through the ones that are compatible with my WP version and read through the details. I finally settle on one that says automatic, no need to do anything. Just install and activate. I do a mock test in another window to check for compatibility with my site (this is provided through a link on the details page), and I can see a nice increase in speed. Not much but hey, beggars can't be choosers.

I go ahead and install and activate the plugin, then run it again on my site. Mmmmh, everything lights up green except one item which lights up red. In case you are wondering, green is good, red is bad. I click on the red and find a link to resolve. I follow simple cues and tweak it up some, then run the plugin again. This time I get site speeds of 85-95%. Great, that's a huge leap from my original 30% site speed. And all I did was click!

Feeling smug and like a genius, I navigate back to WA and conduct a site speed test and my jaw drops. All my pages for the first time ever are now green at 100%! I run the test on Google to countercheck the readings and it gives me a reading of 99%. Bit of a damper there. It tells me I have too many redirects and gives me very complicated ideas on how to reduce the redirects. What are these? Seems I still have more head scratching to do. That is work for another day.

But today, I rejoice in the fact that something has gone really well for me. I suspect a lot of us webmasters may be having the speed problem as I did. I would like to help by sharing just which plugin it is that I used, that has greatly helped me. It's called the PageSpeed Ninja and you can search for it on the plugins page. Follow the instructions and you just may have a happy story to tell, just like me. Best of all, its free to use.

Feel free to comment and tell me if this helps.