By now, everyone knows the value of speed on the Web. Higher conversions, less frustration, more loyalty, and as of 2010 higher rankings on Google can all be had with a faster web site. You can, of course, optimize your content for more speed. But how much does the performance of your hosting effect the speed of your website? This article tests the effects of a new screamingly fast server on a client’s website.
Website Optimization
Velocity NYC Contest: Free Pass Giveaway
We’ve teamed up with O’Reilly to offer our readers a chance to win a free pass to the next Velocity conference in New York City.
Website Speed and SEO – rankings, indexed pages, and quality linked to website performance
Website speed has become an important advantage in our increasingly wired world. The speed of your site can effect a number of important factors including conversion rates, bounce rates, loyalty, and as of 2010 search rankings. This article sheds some light on how website speed can effect Google rankings.
Average Web Page Breaks 1600K – web page statistics and survey trends for page size and web objects
The size of the average web page of the top 1000 websites passed 1600K for the first time in July (see Figure 1). At the same time the number of objects in the average web page increased to 112 objects in July 2014.
WordPress Performance Optimization – speed optimize wordpress websites
WordPress is a very popular CMS used for websites. Offering an intuitive interface to manage and update websites WordPress is justifiably popular. However, WordPress sites can be slow, which can harm conversions and search engine rankings. This article explores the most frequent performance issues with WordPress sites and offers some solutions.
Beware HTTP Redirects for SEO and Performance – carefully use URL redirection for SEO and web performance
HTTP redirects or URL forwarding is a technique for redirecting one URL to another. Often used for avoiding broken links in new sites, or abbreviating URLs, HTTP redirects are a convenient way to preserve traffic and avoid 404 errors. Used incorrectly, however, redirects can cause SEO and performance issues.
Install Mod_Pagespeed – improve website speed automatically testing mod_pagespeed
Google’s mod_pagespeed is an open source Apache module that automatically applies best practice performance rules to web pages and their associated objects. Mod_pagespeed has more than 40 available optimization filters, including image optimization, CSS and JavaScript concatenation, minification, caching, sharding, deferring JavaScript and more. While mod_pagespeed won’t solve all performance problems, it will trim the fat from unminified text files and graphics, and reduce HTTP requests. This article tests the effect of mod_pagespeed on an example site.
Avoid Mass Web Hosting – improve TTFB and website speed by moving your server hosting
Mass web hosting is a popular way to host web sites. Lower costs, easy site creation, and convenience lure site owners to host with the likes of HostGator, GoDaddy.com, and Yahoo.com. The problem with mass hosting is just that, a massive amounts of sites on overloaded servers. With sometimes hundreds of sites on a single web server, your site can suffer slowdowns when another site on the same server gets hammered. Often the best approach in this situation is to move to a new host with more lightly loaded servers. This article shows the effects of such a move for a client on a mass web host.
Healthcare.gov Website Performance Revisited – website speed audit and optimization of healthcare.gov with radware fastview
Previously we reviewed the healthcare.gov website for speed, and found it lacking. The old site was notoriously slow and spawned many “wait” error messages for users looking for health care. Just in time, President Obama made a pledge that the site would be fixed (with a new performance czar) by the end of November. To test his promise, we reviewed the site shortly after that deadline, in early December (see Figure 1). This report shows the results of this study. To see how much the site could be improved further, we had our friends over at Radware test the site with their automatic optimization software called Fastview, which we reviewed in a previous article.
Speedy Mobile Sites Impact Google Search Rankings
Google is now factoring in mobile friendly web designs and mobile site speed into their search engine rankings. With the growth of mobile devices surfing the Web (some sites we’ve tested have more than 40% of their traffic from mobile devices) Google wants its search engine users to experience the full richness of the Web by rewarding sites with fast mobile-friendly designs.