Home Web Analytics Slow Website? Check with Google Speed Test

Slow Website? Check with Google Speed Test

by amol238

website speed

A website that loads slowly is annoying to site visitors. With everything being fast-paced these days, it is likely that they would move to another website instead of sitting and waiting for yours to load. So, you’ll lose both business and reputation, and even blog readers.

Not only that, your search engine ranking is at stake too if you have a slow website. Google has always emphasized that your website loading speed is taken into consideration into the algorithm that determines your website ranking.

Now that you know how the speed of a website can affect your hits and business, you will certainly want to know how fast your website is. With Google being the mother of all search engines, the Google Speed Test is probably the best tool to use to determine the speed at which your website loads. The report doesn’t just tell you what the overall page speed score is, but also provides you with tips in how to boost your website’s speed.

So after checking your speed on Google Speed Test and other free website speed test tools, you find out that your website takes eternity to load and your competitors do much better. What next? Here are some things you can do to speed up your site; they are all free and easy to do:

  1. Split long articles into pages

    When your articles contain large multimedia files and very long content, it is best to use the just split it into multiple pages. That way, the file size within the page is smaller and thus takes less time to load. Splitting articles into pages is also a superb way to increase pageviews and boosting SEO.

  2. Reduce image sizes

    High resolution images are usually the culprits in a slow website. There are several ways you can optimize the images without compromising on its quality.

    One is to compress the image by using a good software such as Adobe Photoshop. Alternatively, there are also various free tools to help you do this without affecting the quality of your images.

    Another thing we can do is to combine the images into CSS sprites, resulting in something like a collage of pictures. By doing so, the web server only loads one image instead of multiple ones. This will reduce the number of hits and traffic the web server needs to handle to serve the page.

    Finally, whenever possible, instead of using .png files as buttons, use .gif files instead. Buttons are, well, just buttons, which you don’t need high quality images of huge images sizes for.

  3. Remove heavy elements that you don’t need

    Whenever you use heavy codes in your website, your server needs to handle more request and needless to say, this translates into a longer processing time. Simple HTML tags are fine but if you don’t really need the image slides, animations and fancy navigation options, remove them as these run on heavy JavaScript and jQuery codes.

  4. Cache your pages

    To speed up your website, you can also cache your web pages with a good caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache, or WP Super Cache.

    These plugins generate static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog which the web server will serve instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts and MySQL database.

  5. Replace PHP functions with HTML

    Another method to reduce PHP load is by replacing certain PHP functions with HTML codes whenever possible. Usually, PHP functions come with your website theme’s scripts to simplify the process of changing the site’s contents. However, only certain pages actually use these functions. Therefore, find out where you can substitute the PHP functions with HTML codes instead.

  6. Optimize CSS

    Avoid using the @import function as this add multiple requests to the server, stretching the time it takes to load your website. Also, did you know that you can reduce the size of a file by writing 3-letter color codes instead of 6-letter ones? For instance, write #fff instead of #ffffff.

    Simple, but it makes quite significant difference in a page’s loading speed!

There you go – 6 simple optimize the images tips to speed up your website. Some are really easy to implement that you needn’t be an expert. Even if you might struggle through some steps or need to enlist help, the returns of a fast website are well-worth the efforts. You wouldn’t want to turn potential customers and blog readers away with your lagging website, right?

Image Credit:Global Jet

You may also like

26 comments

saini@how can April 2, 2012 - 6:27 am

website usually get slow when your home page become heavier
its better to link them so it can reduce upload time

Reply
Travis Johnson April 2, 2012 - 6:55 am

There’s this application from Firefox that splits the pages or something like that and I find it really annoying in the long run.

Reply
Jasmine April 2, 2012 - 9:38 pm

Hi Travis, I haven’t tried something like that in Firefox. Hmm… any idea what’s the application called?

Reply
klaus April 2, 2012 - 9:37 am

thanks for a great post.

After having optimized my page load time is the rankings in google also improved. So your load time is important.

Reply
Jasmine April 2, 2012 - 9:40 pm

That’s good. We must keep tuning our blog and website to make sure the speed is optimum. If all failed, perhaps it’s time to move on, get a better hosting package from a better web host.

Reply
Nick Stamoulis April 2, 2012 - 9:55 am

Multimedia files and flash are common culprits of slow load time. You want to have the fastest site possible. Remove anything that isn’t necessary that’s slowing the site down. Getting information faster is more important than having lots of pretty images on your site.

Reply
Jasmine April 2, 2012 - 9:47 pm

Nick, that’s a good idea, no questions about that. However, if putting those images and multimedia files are inevitable, then can consider using CDN to speed up.

Reply
Henry Seo April 2, 2012 - 10:17 am

Google Page Speed is a great tool . I like the ease and short learning curve. For image optimization, a great tool I used is SpriteMe.

Reply
Alicia April 2, 2012 - 1:00 pm

Me too. I love Google Speed Test, it’s easy to use, fast, and pinpoint what we should do to improve the score! Love your speed tips too… I am sure once I implement your tips, my website’s speed will improve!

Reply
Lubbock Construction company April 2, 2012 - 3:36 pm

Thank you, that’s very interesting information. I need to share with my friends.

Reply
irenelim April 2, 2012 - 11:26 pm

These are really good suggestions, I will try to apply them to my website to improve the speed of my website. Thanks.

Reply
Goa trip April 3, 2012 - 2:46 am

As we all know nowadays google is giving PR in some criteria on loading time of site if your site is taking too much time for loading then google can take it in negative ways which can be prove costly for any site.

Reply
Jasmine April 3, 2012 - 11:32 pm

So, it’s more reasons for us to optimize our website so that it will load faster. Get a better web host and etc.

Reply
Jack Sander April 3, 2012 - 5:54 am

I really think that having a fast website improves Google rankings and the user experience. I will use your tips to increase the loading speed of my website.

Reply
mike April 3, 2012 - 6:13 am

Me too. I love Google Speed Test, it’s easy to use, fast, and pinpoint what we should do to improve the score! Love your speed tips too…

Reply
Becca April 3, 2012 - 6:25 am

Thanks for the good tips provided here! I agree that we have to have an action plan in place before making the offer and we should be sure about it…

Reply
Shahid April 3, 2012 - 6:50 am

Yeah Nice post , one of my friend previously had tried the Adsense approval but this is rejected as due to Loading time By Google.
SO this is important for us to Maintain a loading time. Thank you for share.

Reply
Jasmine April 3, 2012 - 11:34 pm

Oh, I didn’t know that your AdSense application will get rejected simply because of the loading time. Perhaps your friend’s website is loading too freakingly slow?!

Reply
Adrian April 4, 2012 - 8:33 am

I was knowing that the slow page speed hampers the good position in SERP and hence I have been always testing the page speed of my web pages by the Google’s Speed test. The only thing from which I get surprised is the rejection of the Adsense Application due to slow speed! Since I haven’t been in adsense business hence for me it was new! Thanks Jasmine!

Reply
business logo design April 5, 2012 - 1:01 am

It is absolutely clear that if a website is slow it will annoy the visitors. Your suggestions are very impressive, serious and helpful to reduce the site weight and to increase the speed. There is saying that first impression is the last impression, if an absolute new visitor visit your website and it is slow he will never visit again.

Reply
Property Marbella April 6, 2012 - 4:50 am

Hi Jasmine,
So right, Google adds more and more strength in speed, I’ve seen that Google is not attaches so much importance on a web site’s age longer, age plays a smaller role now and the speed more.

Reply
Anuj Sharma April 7, 2012 - 1:56 am

I had recent experience with this issue when I noticed consistent feedback from the US that our new site was slow. I tried most the above which made a difference but the big improvement came when I added aptimize to my web server and the difference is amazing

I guess I had never thought of our website downloading slower in other countries and we were lucky our customers mentioned this when our site was new.

Reply
Paul Jackson April 7, 2012 - 10:29 am

The tips are very significant but I think the best way to make website loading faster is through resizing images in your home page. Don’t let customers annoyed to your website, read this article and surely, you will earn high PR among the rest.

Reply
softwarp April 12, 2012 - 5:53 am

Hi,
I came across something like that in Adsense, my home page’s loading time was quiet good, but the HTML page size was larger than enough…so Adsense didn’t approved my add.

So guys make sure that you have each and every thing optimized according to Google.
These small case may reject your Adsense application. So do take care.

Thanks

Reply
Nanvy @ CRM Software Solutions April 16, 2012 - 3:17 am

I think Google Speed Test is very useful tool to check the speed of the site. It’s not that good that speed of your site is not good or it’s called slow website.

Reply
Mac May 5, 2012 - 10:53 am

Ah, the irony. The Google Page Speed site itself took more than a minute to load. “Do as I say, not as I do,” appears to be Google’s new spam-laden mantra.

Reply

Leave a Comment

Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?
-
00:00
00:00
Update Required Flash plugin
-
00:00
00:00