There are many factors contributing to page speed, but there are some of the most important ones that, when followed, will reduce your business blog page load time significantly. Here are some tips to increase your blog’s page speed:
1. Cache your business blog pages
Some techie consider caching a waste of resource, but results prove that caching does reduce page load time (and reduce burden to your web hosting provider.) If you use CMS (content management system) like WordPress, a caching extension or plugin, such as WP Super Cache, is a must-have.
How can cached pages improve page load time? Well, each time a visitor visits to your business blog, he/she will be served cached pages, instead of “live” pages that will pull data from the database every time someone visits your blog.
2. Optimize your business blog images
An optimized blog images means their sizes are the smallest possible without sacrificing qualities too much. For example, a BMP image is a huge file, while a JPG with similar quality can be small in size. Also consider to resize images manually using an image editor instead of using HTML (in IMG tag, some people are usually using HEIGHT and WIDTH to reduce the size of the images.)
I usually use Pixlr, an online image editing software. No registration needed, you only need to load an image from your computer or an URL, edit the image and save it into some of the most popular extensions, such as JPG and PNG.
3. Compress your page HTML, CSS and Javascript
Your business blog pages are NOT optimized in term of sizes – you CAN have them in smaller size by combining bits and pieces of the HTML and CSS codes. You can do so by using software – you can go to Google’s Minify project hosting page or go to these online tools: JSCompress.com (minify Javascript codes) and MinifyCSS.com (minify CSS codes.) If you use WordPress, you can do so by using WP Minify plugin.
4. Consider to try third-party DNS service
Third-party DNS service, such as CloudFlare can help you cache your blog pages, as well as protecting them from outside threats. My experience with CloudFlare has been great – I preserve bandwidth as much as 70% on a couple of sites of mine using the DNS service, thus increasing page speed considerably.
5. Avoid pulling images and/or scripts from other locations
Hosting your own images can increase your page speed. Instead of referring to images on other sites, you should refer to images hosted on your own web hosting account.
Scripts-wise, when you need to call to those on other sites, be sure to use Google APIs for faster loading scripts.
6. Sign up with a good web hosting provider
Logically, the better web hosting plan you sign up for, the faster your business blog pages will be loaded. Better web hosting plan means access to better hardware.
If you sign up with a shared hosting, you will share resources with dozens, if not hundreds of others; this will make your business blog to appear slow, especially on busy hours. In the other hand, if you sign up for a VPS or dedicated hosting plan, you will share with only a couple of other users, even get the whole web server to run your one and only business blog.
Of course, better web hosting plan means more costs on your side, so you need to decide whether a higher hosting plan will yield good return on investment. Also consider to sign up with quality web hosting provider with great support. I have great experience with HostGator, so you might want to check it out.
How to check your page speed?
You might want to know your current page load time; you can do so using Pingdom tools, Google Page Speed, or any other tools that can show you how long a particular page of your blog loads. Not only that, you can see which elements of your blog pages are loading and how fast they load.
Of course, you want the page load time to be as small as possible, so you might want to check the tool often to check how well your effort in increasing your business blog page speed.
Good luck in building and developing a quality, fast loading business blog!
Ivan Widjaya
Business blog page speed