Have you ever been browsing the internet and end up on a blog site that simply takes forever to load? Chances are, you will not wait for the page to load and click away from the site. It’s just human nature, we are impatient and want things in a hurry…the same can be said for your blog visitors. If you have a slow loading blog, then you will lose visitors.
Did you know that a slow performing blog can also affect your SEO efforts as well. Most notable is the effects page load speeds can have with Google. Their goal is to deliver pages that your visitors will find useful. This is hard to do if the page is not loading quick enough that the visitors will hang around and interact with the site. There’s little to be gained by Google in indexing these sites and displaying them in the search engine results.
One of the most common problems I encounter with WordPress plugins is plugin overload. This simply means that the blog’s owner has installed far too many plugins…In fact they sometimes bloat the blog to the point that it takes forever to load…and a blog that is in this shape is not going to get traffic.
Determining what plugins you may need is really up to you, but the wise blog owner will make sure and test their blog’s performance…particularly the page’s load time after installing a plugin. Remember that you must keep the use of plugins to a minimum to make sure you are getting a fast load time and ultimately a blog that will not drive your visitors away due to poor performance.
How can the average blog owner test these parameters. I want to point you to a resource that can help you. My friend, Clifton Hatfield provides an awesome video on using a totally free tool to check your blog’s performance. I highly recommend that you watch Clifton’s video on testing your blog’s page speed and use the tool he mentions to test your site both before and after you install a plugin.
