Is the TTFB for different locations and browsers irrelevant if you are self-hosting?
-
Please forgive my ignorance on this subject. I have little to no experience with the technical aspects of setting up and running a server.
Here is the scenario:
We are self-hosted on an Apache server. I have been on the warpath to improve page load speed since the beginning of the year. I have been on this warpath not so much for SEO, but for conversion rate optimization. I recently read the Moz Post "How Website Speed Actually Impacts Search Rankings" and was fascinated by the research regarding TTFB. I forwarded the post to my CEO, who promptly sent me back a contradictory post from Cloudflare on the same topic. Ily Grigorik published a post in Google+ that called Cloudflare's experiment "silly" and said that "TTFB absolutely does matter."
I proceeded to begin gathering information on our site's TTFB using data provided by http://webpagetest.org. I documented TTFB for every location and browser in an effort to show that we needed to improve. When I presented this info to my CEO (I am in-house) and IT Director, that both shook their heads and completely dismissed the data and said it was irrelevant because it was measuring something we couldn't control.
Ignorant as I am, it seems that Ilya Grigorik, Google's own Web Dev Advocate says it absolutely is something that can be controlled, or at least optimized if you know what you are doing.
Can any of you super smart Mozzers help me put the words together to express that TTFB from different locations and for different browsers is something worth paying attention to? Or, perhaps they are right, and it's information I should ignore?
Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!
Dana
-
Yes, very helpful guys. I appreciate it!
-
Thanks Igal and hopefully you have some info to work with Dana!
-
Many thanks to both Vadim and Igal for such great information and also a really great thread on the subject. I really, really appreciate your answers.!
-
Honestly, I don't know. I don't think TTFB was ever comparatively tested - at least no to the best of my knowledge.
For security, these are some of the resources I can point to.
I understand that this is not the main issue
Still, I wanted to provide some factual context to my previous statements.
http://zeroscience.mk/files/wafreport2013.pdf http://ddos-protection-services-review.toptenreviews.com/ http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/11/13/protecting-your-website-cloudflare-or-incapsula/
(This last one is interesting since Tony is a COO of Sucuri. Some would call his our competitor. I prefer 'colleague' )
-
security wise it seems both of you guys have stellar options. for me the issue is performance, caching for dynamic sites, CDN performance, and in this case TTFB response. I was not sure with your response do you have faster TTFB to CF?
Thanks
-
Hi Vadim
Thanks.
Yep, I work for Incapsula but no, we are not the said "Mod".As for CF comparison... Generally speaking, we are more business oriented and security focused. I know that our security offering is more comprehensive, especially because both WAFs were comparatively pen-tested on several occasions and we always came out as consistently (and significantly) better option.We also have addition security features - like 2FA support and backdoor shell protection - which CF simply doesn't offer and we do more in way of ddos mitigation, especially against smart application layer attacks which require security capabilities, besides network muscle.
Still, speed wise, I always considered us to be pretty much on the same level. However, until few days ago I never considered TTFB to be such core SEO factor, so maybe we have better performance there...
But again, to be fair, I`m only speculating - mostly based on the CF blog you've shared.
(if TTFB is considered un-important, it might also be under developed...)Might be an interesting thing to test and document.
-
Hi Igal,
Do you work for incapsula, you are mentioned as a Mod on the blog?
I have heard great things about incapsula from others, but in terms of TTFB is it better than cloudflare? If so, how so?
Also any other ways that it excels Cloudflare? any ways its inferior to Cloudflare in your opinion?
Thanks I am really looking for more info, as I had great results with Cloudflares features and offering, wondering if I should give Incapsula a run
Thanks
-
I absolutely agree with Vadim. (+1)
Google is the best source for Google facts. Everything else is just speculation.
And yes, generally speaking, the best answer is to use a CDN....
The reason is simple. CNDs proxy technology, which was designed to minimize "physical" distances between the site's content and browsers, directly influences TTFB.Being an in-house SEO for a CDN company I get a lot of questions about this from our support and clients. I have to admit, until recent Moz post, I wasn't aware of full implications of TTFB and considered it to be one of few page load speed related metrics. (http://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking)
This post really helped me get a better grasp on things. Interestingly enough, few month ago one of our clients Guest Posted in our blog about speed improvement gained by our free plan. Among other things, he mentioned 70% improvement in TTFB (grade going from F to A)
(http://www.incapsula.com/the-incapsula-blog/item/718-what-incapsula-free-did-for-my-site)At the time I didn't give it much attention. Because, like many others, I was focusing on overall load speeds....
Now I can't help but feel that this was a missed opportunity.
This post could be even better with the added SEO angle...
If anyone here is interested in giving this a try and guest posting about it, I`ll be happy to provide all resources needed on our end. -
Yea this makes sense as others have said that Cloudflare is trying to say that TTFB is not the most important metric, and so they published this study, as it aids their business model.
I would do just that listen to Google dev vs Cloudflare. Also the way I think about it even if their studies are true, where for the overall benefit TTFB would have to increase if you are using some compression, you still need to work and decrease your TTFB either way, that is just intuition. I apologize if I made it seem that TTFB is to be ignored, because Cloudflare state's that quite boldly,
Again some things that affect TTFB:
- Move your website to a faster/better server (If an option)
- Use a CDN or something similar to reduce the load on the server (repeated requests to a server will increase the TTFB)
- Reduce the time the server spends processing the request for information (sent above) and more here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10938682/how-to-reduce-server-wait-time
-
Thanks Vadim. Yes, this Cloudflare post is exactly the one I was referencing in my question. As I mentioned, Ilya Gregorik posted a rebuttal to their experiment here: post in Google+
It seems to me that if a Google developer says TTFB absolutely does matter that this would take precedence over anything Cloudflare might say.
What do you think?
-
Databases? Optimize any database queries that are slow This should help: http://www.techfounder.net/2011/03/25/database-profiling-and-optimizing-your-database-the-generic-version/
Now before you pass anything over to the IT this issue is a heated one in some cases where you have people saying that TTFB is not might not be the key metric to go after, here is more food for thought:
http://blog.cloudflare.com/ttfb-time-to-first-byte-considered-meaningles
"At CloudFlare we make extensive use of nginx and while investigating TTFB came across a significant difference in TTFB from nginx when compression is or is not used. Gzip compression of web pages greatly reduces the time it takes a web page to download, but the compression itself has a cost. That cost causes TTFB to be greater even though the complete download is quicker."
-
Thanks Vadim. This is helpful. In the first article the author writes:
"The only thing that is controllable is the server you are on." He suggests optimizing the database. What specific & measurable directive might I give to our IT manager that would accomplish this goal?
The second post looks very helpful indeed. I am downloading Microsoft's VRTA right now. It's a bit technically over my head, but I get the concepts. This should be something I can pass on to IT...however, it seems the info could be a bit dated (it repeatedly references IE 7)...Is there anything additional that might be more current?
Thanks again!
-
Hi Dana,
Yes TTFB is something you can control with the type of server you use. And where that server is in relation to your visitors. You cannot control the browsers they use, but hear are some thoughts on possible optimizations:
Server side: http://createdevelop.blog.com/2010/10/12/how-to-reduce-time-to-first-byte/
Location (plus other suggestions): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd188562.aspx
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
-
Difference keyword and co-occurence
Could someone explain me what the difference between a keyword and a co-occurence is ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Keyword before location: Do you notice a big difference in performance?
Frequently in Moz, I see that the keywords that use "KEYWORD LOCATION " have higher volume than "LOCATION KEYWORD." For example, "chinese food Austin" is 201-500, while "Austin chinese food" is 11-50. I'm interested in your experiences targeting one variation of this type of keyword over the other. Are you seeing that using the exact match matters? Even if the order of K+L versus L+K does matter, do you find that near matches, like "chinese food in Austin", work just as well? Concrete examples of performance would be fantastic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kevin_P1 -
Keyword Self Cannibalization and E-Commerce
I run a Magento shop - let's imagine a situation where the category landing page, is about "Joe Bloggs Kettles" Then on that page, we have the products listed ; so we would have links to products pages - these links will be called something like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
Joe Bloggs Red Kettle
Joe Bloggs Yellow Kettle
Joe Bloggs Purple Kettle Can someone please tell me if this is ok or should we rework our strategy? Thanks0 -
I have search result pages that are completely different showing up as duplicate content.
I have numerous instances of this same issue in our Crawl Report. We have pages showing up on the report as duplicate content - they are product search result pages for completely different cruise products showing up as duplicate content. Here's an example of 2 pages that appear as duplicate : http://www.shopforcruises.com/carnival+cruise+lines/carnival+glory/2013-09-01/2013-09-30 http://www.shopforcruises.com/royal+caribbean+international/liberty+of+the+seas We've used Html 5 semantic markup to properly identify our Navigation <nav>, our search widget as an <aside>(it has a large amount of page code associated with it). We're using different meta descriptions, different title tags, even microformatting is done on these pages so our rich data shows up in google search. (rich snippet example - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&oq=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&gs_l=hp.3...1102.1102.0.1601.1.1.0.0.0.0.142.142.0j1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.gvI6vhnx8fk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44442042,d.eWU&fp=a03ba540ff93b9f5&biw=1680&bih=925 ) How is this distinctly different content showing as duplicate? Is SeoMoz's site crawl flawed (or just limited) and it's not understanding that my pages are not dupe? Copyscape does not identify these pages as dupe. Should we take these crawl results more seriously than copyscape? What action do you suggest we take? </aside> </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JMFieldMarketing0 -
.co.uk .com linking brand and template on different domains?
Hi From an SEO point of view what are the current recommendations for linking and using the same template for the same brand on a .com and .co.uk website, so both named the same, using the same template and products but one for Europe and one for the states and Australia.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | askshopper0 -
Schema markup for videos: Are video schema tags only for use on video hosted by a site or do they also apply to embedded videos hosted on YouTube?
We do not currently have a native video hosting solution for our site and instead embed videos that are hosted on YouTube. Can video schema markup be used for YouTube hosted video? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lwalker0 -
SEO Features of Different Shopping Cart, Need Help on Selecting BEST Cart
I want to move my existing online store to a new Multilanguage Shopping Cart. After reading Andrew Bleakley's review, I have to make a dissisions between the following shopping cart. New to SEO, I will like to have your impressions on there SEO Features and HELP me select the BEST SEO frendly shopping cart. corecommerce: Search Engine Friendly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze205
• Entire store is search engine optimized
• Dynamically generates static html pages with clean URL's (no numbers and special characters inside the URL's) for products, categories and custom content pages (ie about us, etc.)
• Auto Generated Meta Tags for your store to create web site page rankings that matter!
• Built in Canonical URL's
• Header tags usage for your product names
• Auto-build of the Google XML Sitemap
• Meta tags for all products, categories and content pages
• Add your own custom meta tags from your store
• You determine the page titles
• You can add custom content for the category pages
• Use of alt and title tags for images
• Use of bread crumb trails
• Customer SEO page slugs (naming) for products and categories americommerce: Have a look at there page, the list is to long. http://www.americommerce.com/ecommerce-seo.html ------------------------------ asho Web Optimisation - SEO
Fully Search Engine Optimised (SEO) structure
Optimised and updated by industry leading SEO experts
Source code optimised for search engines
Page based META management. Titles, descriptions and keywords
Link popularity program between Ashop Commerce customers
Always up to date with new search engine algorithms
Spider friendly URLs
301 Redirect and 302 Redirect support for any page
Free SEO tips & tools
Auto HTML and CSS page generation
Google, Yahoo and Bing verification meta inclusion
Inbuilt automatic XML site map generation (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
Correct use of robots.txt file
Correct use of NOFOLLOW attribute
Auto set up with correct hierarchy for H tags
Auto creation of alt text on menu text links and images
Tableless design structure Pinnaclecart Cutting-edge search engine optimization
Flat URL generation (www.yoursite.com/product/product-name.htm)
Ability to create your own URL structure (www.yoursite.com/create-your-own-url.html)
Manage all URL's at the category, product and page level.
If you're moving from a different application, you can change the URL's to match the old URL's.
Meta keyword, title and description for each product page
Meta keyword, title and description for each category page
Meta keyword and description for home page and all pages created via the control panel
Upload / create robot.txt file
Ability to generate meta tags based on product descriptions
Ability to modify HTML or CSS via browser
Automatically generated site map
Generates XML site map for Google Base
Valid WC3 template design
Image ALT tags
Design generates very lightweight, 100% HTML page without CSS or PHP coding
Creates "breadcrumb" navigation
Search-engine-friendly architecture
Ability to upload customized HTML pages to assist in How would you rate those carts structure in a SEO point of view? My existing store, http://www.filtrationmontreal.com/ (OsCommerce) need SEO improvement and moving it to a SEO Frendly Shopping Cart is the best thing I can do to increase sales and conversions. Thank you for your support, help and precious time. BigBlaze0 -
Keyword Self-Cannibalization
Hi, Happy Friday! I was advised to look at the SEO strategy of a UK SEO company and copy a technique they used, however, I have doubts that this technique is any good. So mydomain.com targets My Domain For my main keyword phrase, I was told to place a link to a newly created inner page in my footer, targeting the main keyword and on this page, create unique content which points back to my homepage. Now I also have mydomain.com/my-domain.php which has a link to mydomain.com with anchor text My Domain. Based on the SEOMoz reports, this now seems to be Keyword Self Cannibalisation and I think that it is diluting link juice and the value of my SEO on my homepage for this term rather than helping. Can you advise if this technique is wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tdsnet0