Site Speed for SEO Purposes

[BWrightTLM]

I have a question regarding site speed. Obviously, I know this affects my SEO strategies and I have a few small clients that I have built websites for on Wordpress (approx 10-40 pages per site), but have yet to do anything regarding the site load time. I would to optimize them to load as quickly as possible to help with our SEO tactics.

What does everyone recommend? I recently downloaded the W3 Total Cache plugin and set it up to enable page cache, browser cache, and database cache. I followed some of the steps in the guide of WP beginner.

I also used tools.pingdom.com to test site speed before and after.

Any recommendation on other helpful tools to help site speed for small, local business websites?

[Kara.Wallace]

Hi Ben,

I would recommend using this tool to gauge where your sites stand: http://gtmetrix.com/

You can also compare multiple websites/competitors against your own.

You will also find that they show where you are slowing down and how to fix it... very actionable.

Hope this helps.

Mike

[BWrightTLM]

Great info. Will definitely check that out. When would the load time become a concern? My guess is 3 or 4 seconds...

[Kara.Wallace]

Probably depends on the type of site/industry you are in. I would use GTMetrix to run my site against my competitors... if my site beats my competitors, then I am in a good spot; however, if my competitors' sites are faster than mine... well... then I better get to work!

Here's some information showing how fractions of a second can seriously impact the user experience.

Infographic

Article

And here is Google's resources for speed.

Mike