Slow blog sites can kill your business. Do you know why speed is so important for your sites?
There are many ways to improve your site speed and attract more followers. You’ll be more likely to improve your blog speed if you know why it’s so important.
That’s why we’ve compiled this guide to the top reasons speed matters for blog sites. Keep reading to learn why increasing your site speed can get you the visitors you deserve.
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Reasons Why Speed is Important for Your Blog Sites
#1. You’ll Get More Signups
As a blogger, you’re probably hoping to get signups for an email newsletter, online course, or another online offering.
However, if your site is slow to load, people are likely to navigate away from it before they ever get into the signup process. A faster site equals more signups, no matter what it is you want people to sign up for.
#2. You’ll Rank Higher in the Search Engines
Fast-loading blog sites are also ranked better by Google. This is an easy way to boost your SEO without investing a lot of time or money.
Google itself has stated that site speed is a significant factor in its site rankings now. Google wants to keep its users happy, and sites that load fast help achieve that goal.
#3. You’ll Make More Sales
If you’re selling something or trying to get another sort of conversion from your users, you’ll have more success if your blog sites load fast.
People are already hesitant to part with their money in most cases. If your site loads slowly, they’ll be even more likely to navigate away before making a purchase. Keep your site speed up so they won’t take the time to second-guess their purchase.
#4. You’ll Have More Loyal Visitors
To keep people coming back to your blog, you need it to give an enjoyable experience. People will be more loyal to a site that’s fast to load because they won’t feel like it’s a waste of time.
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#5. You’ll Get Better Reviews
Online reviews are a great way to get more visitors and customers. However, you need to make sure those reviews are positive. You’ll get much better reviews if you have a site that loads fast and is pleasant to use.
#6. You Can Do More With the Site
If you optimize your site speed, you can do more with images, videos, and other content without worrying about slowing things down.
Of course, too many large images and videos can slow your site speed down, but if you know how to optimize everything effectively, you can create a visually pleasing site full of content that won’t slow your users’ experience.
#7. You’ll Give a Great First Impression
No matter what your niche is, you’re bound to have competition on the web. To make a great first impression, you need to have fast-loading blog sites that can quickly impress your users.
The first impression is key to beating the competition. With a fast site speed, your users won’t have time to think about navigating away from your site to your competitors.
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How to Improve the Speed of Your Blog Sites
Now that you know why speed matters, it’s time to learn a few ways to boost your blogs’ speed. These proven tips allow you to increase your speed easily.
#1. Compress Images
Your blog sites will load much faster if you compress your images.
Using images is a must for having an attractive, attention-grabbing site. However, you don’t have to sacrifice speed for images – instead, just compress them.
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Download one of a number of plugins that are designed to help with image compression. Some even let you compress batches of images, so improving your site speed won’t slow you down.
You don’t need to sacrifice image quality, either – the best plugins preserve quality and only compress the size.
#2. Remove Excess Ads
A lot of blog sites contain ads or pop-ups to encourage sales and conversions, or build revenue. However, you need to balance the need for ads with the need for a fast-loading site.
You don’t need to eliminate ads altogether, but you will need to get them under control so they don’t slow down your site. Some plugins can test your site’s speed and tell you which ads and pop-ups are slowing you down the most.
When choosing plugins for your pop-ups, make sure to take speed into consideration: some are better than others. Delete any pop-ups that aren’t effectively getting the conversions you want.
#3. Fix Network Issues
Make sure network issues aren’t causing slowdowns for your readers. If your site goes down, people might head to the competition, rather than waiting for the problems to be fixed.
Invest in a remote IT support to make sure you can fix problems at any time, from anywhere. It’s well worth it to avoid site downtime as much as possible.
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#4. Use Caching Plugins
Caching is one of the top ways to make your site load faster. Caching creates a static form of your site, so it can be provided to users much faster. You can choose which pages to cache to maximize the plugin’s efficiency.
Plugins are great, but too many can slow down your blog sites. If you’re using lots of plugins to trick out your site, take stock of what you really need and get rid of anything that might be slowing you down.
Keep in mind that customers would rather have a fast site than a fancy one. In fact, clean layouts are easier on the eye than sites with lots of bells and whistles. Streamline, and see how your site traffic may grow.
#6. Optimize for Media
If your blog sites have lots of media, this can slow things down no matter how much compression you use.
Try a plugin that will load text first, allowing visitors to start reading before the media loads. This can eliminate the feeling of “waiting” for a site.
#7. Get a Better Plan
Your hosting plan might be part of the problem.
When you started your blog sites, chances are good that you went for shared hosting – it’s cheaper than the alternatives. However, when your sites gain more content and more users, these shared plans often don’t cut it anymore.
Instead, upgrade your hosting plan to a dedicated option or a VPS (virtual private server).
VPS hosting is generally the fastest option since everything is stored in the cloud. Cloud distribution goes across many different computers, which helps eliminate points where your site can get slowed down. VPS hosting is also cheaper than dedicated hosting.
With dedicated servers, on the other hand, you’re basically renting out a computer for hosting. You’ll be able to use all the resources yourself, but it does cost more, and isn’t as flexible since it’s not hosted by multiple computers.
With these plans, resources are dedicated just for your site, so you won’t be slowed down by the competition. You’ll also get much higher bandwidth limits.
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#8. Fix HTTP Requests
HTTP requests are another major thing that can slow a site down. If there are too many requests, or they’re too large, you’ll run into problems.
When your browser gets a file from a web server, such as a blog post, your browser uses HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol. This request-response protocol means your device requests the file, and the server sends a response, followed by the file requested.
Needless to say, too many requests can seriously slow things down. Reduce requests and things will run faster.
#9. Shrink Your Images
Sometimes, image compression just isn’t enough. If you’ve tried compression and your site still loads slow, you may need to go further.
First, you can try reducing your image resolution. You don’t have to go too low – but many users won’t between a high-resolution image and a medium-resolution one (or won’t care). People would rather have fast blog sites than perfectly clear images.
Next, you can try cropping your images to make them smaller. Smaller images, of course, mean smaller file sizes.
You can also reduce the number of images you use. Of course, you’ll always want to have some to keep things visually interesting. However, not every blog post needs to be laden with images in order to work.
#10. Leave Your Baggage Behind
Even once you’ve covered all these steps, there may still be excess “baggage” on your blog sites that you can get rid of.
Look for excess code that might be left over from an old change to your site. If you’re running an e-commerce site, your database of orders might have grown cumbersome.
Are there so many backups that they’re slowing your server down? How about media libraries that are outdated and can be done away with? If it’s not actively serving your site, delete it.
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Ready to Boost Your Site’s Speed?
Make your blog sites faster, and the results will be remarkable. We know that you can easily grow your conversions and site traffic using the tips here.
Are you just getting started? Check out our post on how to start a blog so you can do it right the first time.
