There are many things that affect the loading speed of your website, but one of the biggest factors is how big your images are. A large image file will take more time to load and make it slower, but even an image that’s the right size can have problems if it has the wrong file format or hasn’t been optimized correctly before being used in the code of your website. All of these issues can be fixed with some extra effort on your part to make sure you use the right tools when optimizing images for use on your website.
Always make sure your blog loads quickly for the best user experience. Use these tips to improve and optimize your blog for faster loading speeds.
Your blog’s loading speed is important for a number of reasons. If your blog takes too long to load, your readers will likely get impatient and leave before they even get a chance to see your content. Furthermore, search engines like Google also take loading speed into account when ranking websites. This means that if your blog has a slow loading speed, it will likely rank lower in search results.
Everything that can affect your blog speed
Every last thing you do on your website, from how fast your server is, what devices people are using, and how much bandwidth you have, etc. can affect your loading speed. But, there are also a lot of things you can do on your end. Make sure you have a fast and lightweight CMS that loads quickly such as WordPress with a good caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or Hyper Cache running on it.
Minify all your CSS and JavaScript files by hand or use something like YUI Compressor to minify them automatically. Minifying these files can cut down their size by 50% which will make a huge difference in page load times. If you’re not sure where to start, run your site through Google Page Speed Insights. It’ll tell you exactly what needs fixing (and it gives tips on how to fix them).
Once you’ve optimized everything you possibly can on your end, then look at moving servers/hosting (if needed) and finally getting more bandwidth if everything else fails. You could get some quick wins by doing just one or two of those things but you’ll see faster results when you tackle all three.
Also, don’t forget about social media plugins and 3rd party services like Disqus! These add bloat to your site so try to minimize them as much as possible.
For example, I removed Disqus comments from my own site because they were causing too many problems with slow load times. By removing them I was able to shave several seconds off my pages’ load time without losing any functionality whatsoever!
Basics of faster loading speeds
If you want your visitors to return, it’s important that your site is speedy. If a visitor can’t load a page in three seconds or less, it might bounce. That’s why SEOs always talk about site speed. For one thing, Google wants a speedy experience because it wants users on its website as long as possible so that it can show them ads.
According to Microsoft Digital Marketing & Advertising’s report on site speed in 2017, 53% of online shoppers leave sites if pages take longer than three seconds to load and 57% will abandon an e-commerce purchase if pages don’t load quickly enough. It also found that 40% of respondents said slow loading times would make them more likely to shop elsewhere.
It also makes sense from a marketing perspective: faster loading speeds mean more people see your content and engage with it—and not just once, but over time. A study by Akamai found that those who have a better browsing experience are 55% more likely to come back within 30 days, while those who have a poor browsing experience are 28% less likely to do so.
Furthermore, 46% of consumers expect web pages to load in two seconds or less (and 64% expect mobile web pages to load instantly). The bottom line? Make sure your site loads fast—or else you could be losing potential customers at every turn.
Plugins you can use
The best way to optimize your blogging platform is to host your own WordPress website. When you host it on your own server, you’re in complete control of how fast (or slow) it loads. And there are numerous factors that can make a difference in speed.
For example, choosing a better-optimized theme or moving images of your server onto a CDN (content delivery network) will greatly improve loading times—especially if most of your readers live overseas and need data from across oceans. But even if you don’t have access to these things, you can still do some basic optimization by installing some plugins.
One of my favorites is WP Super Cache which automatically generates static HTML files from your posts so they load faster. It also lets you cache pages so users don’t have to wait for them to load each time they visit.
Another great plugin is Autoptimize which minifies CSS and JavaScript files as well as HTML files so all content loads faster (not just yours).
Both plugins are free and easy to install via WordPress’ built-in plugin installer. You should also ensure that your hosting provider isn’t using old versions of Apache, PHP, or MySQL because older versions aren’t as efficient at processing requests.
A great tool for checking any web page’s performance against a range of criteria is WebPageTest. You can enter any URL into its Performance tab and see what improvements could be made. If you’re not sure where to start with all these optimizations, try posting questions on Quora and get help from experts who’ve been through it before!
Other tricks for a faster blog
While optimizing your server is obviously an important step in making your website faster, there are also many other small things you can do to help make it run a little bit more smoothly.
Here are some other tips and tricks:
Reduce images:
Images will always be a part of blogging, but they have a habit of slowing down page load times, so consider using fewer images (or smaller images) on each post where possible. Also, consider limiting their use in header and footer areas as well.
Reduce plugins:
The number of plugins you have installed on your WordPress site can affect its performance, so keep them as few as possible – especially third-party ones that are not essential or used very often.
WP Content folder:
If you’re experiencing problems with slow loading speeds, moving your wp-content folder to another location may help speed up page load times. This can easily be done by installing a plugin like W3 Total Cache.
Optimize images:
In addition to reducing image sizes, also optimize them for faster loading speeds by choosing PNGs over JPGs when possible, as PNGs tend to compress better than JPGs without losing quality.
Enable gzip compression:
Enabling gzip compression in Apache helps compress all data before sending it out to users’ browsers, which makes pages load significantly faster because they’re smaller than usual.
To enable gzip compression, go to your .htaccess file and add these lines: AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/Html text/plain text/xml application/xml application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
Browser caching:
Browser caching means users can visit your site while bypassing servers entirely. Because servers don’t need to process requests, it’s much faster.
Final Words
Keeping a log of what is being said about your business can help you keep track of performance and find out what strategies are working and which aren’t. Keeping tabs on what works and what doesn’t is especially useful if you have multiple locations, as they will all be competing with each other in terms of reputation.
Having an early warning system also comes in handy if there is a negative comment or news story that could damage your reputation. At least then you can take preventative action before it blows up in your face. This doesn’t mean reacting emotionally, but rather taking necessary steps to fix problems within your organization so that things don’t escalate into a full-blown PR crisis.
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