Is Your Website Fast Enough To Rank Well?
If you want your site to rank well in Google, it needs to load FAST!
Its no secret that the search engines, want websites to load quickly, and if your site is not competing, it may be that your site just needs a bit of loving care and attention.
Each time we add an image, a plugin or a script to our sites, it will take a little longer to load, as it needs to read the code.
So as we grow our site, and add more content and images, the load time will become even slower still.
So what can we do about it?
Many of the problems associated with slow load times, can be fixed quite easily, badly coded plug ins can be replaced with a better one, images can be reduced in size, a caching and minify plug in can be installed to help.
But firstly we need to Analyse WHAT is causing our sites to load slowly
To do this you can use a free tool at
Open the site and type in your URL.
Let it do its thing, and it will give you a result using a traffic light system and an overall score.
Here's a screenshot of a result I have just run on my site
And The Results Are In!
As you can see that the results are green, and load time is good (Considering I have a lot of images on my home page!)
The red and amber areas, at the top of the list, are the areas that need improving, and these are the ones that should be worked on
Once you have run the test on your own site, look at the recommendation list, these are live links that will enable you to drill deeper into areas that need attention
You will now be able to address each of the problems to enable your site to load faster and be more Google/visitor friendly.
Now you are not looking to get 100% page speed grade - as there are often things that cant be easily changed.
What you are aiming for is a GREEN page speed, but the faster the better.
Unfortunately I am unable to list every possible scenario or 'how to fix' here, but if you have an issue that needs to be fixed and you are not sure how, post a question here at WA and I am sure you will be offered a solution.
Recent Comments
56
Fantastic I just checked my site and it shows y slow grade is low 73% , how do I change this to a better percentage? Other than that thank you for all your help!!
73% is not too bad for YSlow, but to see what adjustments you need to make
1. Click on the Yslow Tab
2. Then Click on the item that is showing red.
3. This then tells you what you need to do.
Some of this is server side, so you will not be able to action.
If you require any site edits such as combining http request, you can outsource this at Odesk or similar - or it may advise a CDN which I am not sure you can run if you are hosted here at WA
However if you are green and your site load time is under 5 seconds (Displayed at the top of the page) I would not worry too much
Regards
Paul
Thank you for sharing! Just checked out my site and it was not to bad. Goin back now to see what areas I can improve.
Thanks Paul, a very interesting piece of kit, I did have problems with my other websites ,but my Wealthy Affiliate site passed.
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Thanks for sharing Paul. My result is bad. E & C!
Even more work for you the Elle - Not sure what E&C is that. Its Elephant and Castle here!
My speed grade is E, ok at least it's not T for turtle :) .. I got to fix this. I noticed in GA my site health decreased too. This is a very good tool.
thanks again.
Oh I see - sorry, I thought it was an abbreviation Doh!
If you click on the text next to amber and red warnings, it will highlight the areas you need to work on
Good luck with your improvements
Paul
No worries. Ok checking it out now. Thanks.