How can I reduce my webpage load time?
-
According to google
'On average, pages in your site take 4.6 seconds to load (updated on Apr 3, 2011). This is slower than 71% of sites. These estimates are of low accuracy (fewer than 100 data points). The chart below shows how your site's average page load time has changed over the last few months. For your reference, it also shows the 20th percentile value across all sites, separating slow and fast load times.'
My website: http://ablemagazine.co.uk
I've installed Cache plugins, Minify plugins, reduce the amount of posts on my main page. But my website is still taking too long to load and I'm afraid I'm being penalised for it.
Any tips?
-
The logo actually reduces a whole lot via smush.it, so that can help a little. Have you looked at the graphic elements that came with the theme that you didn't necessarily create?
Yahoo's Y!Slow extension for Firefox can also point out a lot of other areas for speeding up the site.
-
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately I already compress all my images with photoshop so the savings with smush.it are usually less than 500Bytes. I suppose it all helps!
-
Keep in mind that (to the best of my knowledge) Google is pulling the above data just from visitors that have the Google Toolbar installed, and does have a low number of data points for this conclusion.
In looking at your current home page, I'd say the image file sizes are something you can easily work on to help speed load time and increase user experience. In Firefox, right click on any image, and click View Image Information. It should take you to the Media tab of the Page Info dialog, and show you all of the media you have on that page, including background images.
Your theme files are large in some cases. The main-right.jpg file is 20k, header.jpg is 35k. Your logo is a 12k png. There are also several post images in the 20-40k range.
Yahoo has a tool called Smush.it which offers lossless compression, and there is even a Wordpress plugin that will compact new photos on upload, and reduce file sizes of existing images in the media library on demand http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-smushit/. For time invested, the plugin is probably the easiest fix to reduce your file size and speed up your page load time, in addition to fixing the images in your theme.
-
Page load time is a very small factor for website ranking, but this could be done :
Regroup CSS in a single file, same for javascripts. Make a CSS sprite for the background images.
Add expires and gzip in your htaccess file if you can :
<ifmodule expires_module="">ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/bmp "access plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/ico "modification plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/vnd.microsoft.icon "modification plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType application/ico "modification plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/icon "modification plus 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "modification plus 1 year"</ifmodule><ifmodule deflate_module="">AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/php text/html text/txt text/javascript text/css application/javascript application/x-javascript</ifmodule>
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type im trying to rank for?
Hello, if I am trying to rank for a service type and the exact phrase is in the companies name, can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type? Seizing the opportunity to get another mention of the businesses name...two birds with the one stone if you will... For example, "lawn cutting" being the service type but the company's name is Paul's lawn cutting. Could i put Pauls Lawn Cutting in the image alt text, or just stick to lawn cutting? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Gavinn0 -
Product names are defacto identical - How can I modify Title?
Hi! Our site http://www.metecoparts.gr/ help our customers search our inventory of cars for used parts. The way the titles of product pages are structured is: Car Parts – Make Model Year – Brand Name. So for instance this page http://www.metecoparts.gr/car/4074-alfa-romeo-156-1997 have the title "Car Parts Alfa Romeo 156 1997 – Meteco SA" (I have translated Greek words to English) So as you can imagine we end up with a bunch of duplicate titles pages. I’m trying to diversify the titles but the problem is that there aren’t many product identifiers other than body configuration, car color, fuel, engine capacity and engine code. But only color and year of production is partly unique as most Alfa Romeo 156 are 4 door saloons, with 1600cc petrol engine. The only thing that is unique for every product page is the page ID. So should I use it in the page title? Its the only unique identificator but on ther other hand it has no use for our customers. Or is there any other way of having unique titles that I am missing? Please note that in our industry on-page optimization is crucial since there is no social sharing and much link building (who wants to share an old car that is being sold for parts?) Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | Johnlock10 -
Schema business address - can this affect me in the national rankings
Looking at using Schema microdata on our new website, we currently rank quite decently in Google UK. If I was to add schema mark up for our business address could this effect us in Google UK rankings wise i.e. our rankings for national search (for want of a better word!) suffer but our local rankings increase?
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C0 -
70 Domain Names Point to 70 Nearly Identical Inner Webpages
I have a new SEO client; his website has never been optimized. There are 70 domain names involved with this one website. Each domain name points to an exact replica of the main page, other than the fact that a small content box has different info in it, and sometimes the header graphic is different. So, 70 webpages that are 5% different from each other and 5% different from the main page. How badly is this issue affecting this website's ability to rank well, and what is the best way to solve this?
On-Page Optimization | | netsites0 -
Hi.. Can a E-commerce site have a Google Authorship.
Hi Can a E-commerce site have a Google Authorship, and if yes i have learned google requires a face for Google Authorship, as they are applying Facial recognition with the authorship. If So, how can an e-commerce website have an individual's face. ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0 -
Can't see why been marked 'Avoid Keyword Stuffing'
Hi SEOmoz! I'm a newbie, first post, here goes... Working my way through On-Page Report Cards. Noticed this page http://www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel/vintage-chanel-bags flagged with 'Avoid Keyword Stuffing in Document'. Keyword is 'Vintage Chanel bags' and there is just one instance of it on this particular category page?? Any ideas? Any general pointers for me on www.vintageheirloom.com would also be much appreciated. Thanks SEOmozzers...
On-Page Optimization | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Slow page load times from asynchronous javascript
Our analytics are showing that our homepage takes, on average, ~14 seconds to load. All of the content on the page loads fairly quickly, while it takes a few seconds to load the social media stuff (which is mostly asynchronous javascript that is running in the background). The question is this: Does Her-Magesty-Google take into account the amount of time it takes to load everything, including the social media stuff from asynchronous javascript? Or does Google see that the content loads fairly quickly and doesn't ding me for the js that is running in the background?
On-Page Optimization | | ibfx0 -
Can A Blog post impact negatively on Google rankings?
We used to rank fairly highly on Google for our preferred search term, but once we introduced a blog (or rather the blog excerps) onto our home page we dropped from page 1 to page 3 for our preferred search term. We have made the assumption this may be down to diluting of keywords and therefor the key phrase or message to the Search Engines was not as clear as it was before. Is this generally accepted as being the case ? If so - should each and every blog post excerpt start with the key seo search phrase to maintain the integrity of that search phrase ? or perhaps even better still is it best to have the blog on a dedicated page only with no excerpts on the home page ? We are using Wordpress and also using multiple categories within the blog - is it perhaps best to just have all blog postings on the one page and use TAGS more often? Thanksing you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | kiswebsltd0