Today in the NHD Podcast we’re talking to Sigurdur from www.quickfalcon.com, a man that will turn your average WordPress website into an http formula one.
In this episode Sig explains to us why site load speed is so important, both for user experience and On-Page SEO. More importantly, he shares with us many of the techniques he uses to make his client’s sites, and his own, incredibly fast.
If you want to improve your website’s speed, this podcast is definitely what you need: you’ll hardly get more actionable advice than this.
Sign up to our newsletter below to watch a video of Sig reviewing NoHatDigital’s site speed and telling us how we could improve it (If you’re already subscribed, you won’t receive the newsletter twice).
Referenced in the podcast
- QuickFalcon
- Sigurdur’s Site Speed course
- Free Site Speed Review on QuickFalcon
- Kraken.io
- Async JS and CSS
- EWWW Image Optimizer
- Advanced Lazy Load
- Unveil Lazy Load
- W3 Total Cache
- WPEngine
- wp-smushit
- WebPageTest
- Autoptimize
Other resources on Site Speed:
How important is Site Speed in 2014 by Search Engine Journal
Why you Need a Seriously Fast Website by Copyblogger
Why Website Speed is important by Six Revisions
Outrun your competition
How about you ? Do you take Site Speed seriously? What techniques do you use to improve it? Do you think we should have a Site Speed module in our Private Training Course?
Sarah says:
Question for Sig – I ran speed tests on your website Quickfalcon. It showed 69/100 on Pingdom tools and on the Webpage test site showed a page speed value of 92/100. Are these metrics good. I also notice that when I test my own websites the results can vary quite a bit from day to day or even hour to hour. Is this a problem with the testing tools or does it just show up variance in our servers?
Siggy says:
Hey Sarah,
I have actually not optimized QuickFalcon.com (I thought I had .. but apparently it was unoptimized!!) but even though it isn’t optimized, it still loads in under 3 seconds.
Those metrics are not bad, but higher scores are generally better.
That said, those metrics are not to be relied upon.
The ultimate metric is the loading time for visitors.
In my experience using GTMetrix, Pingdom and Google PageSpeed Insights, a SLOWER loading website can have a higher score than a faster website.
In fact, I can get 100/100 on pingdom by making the website load in 60 seconds.
Obviously 100/100 is a great score, but the website load time is what really matters.
As for your own websites, if they vary from time to time, you either have a shared server that is under heavy loads from time to time, or your own website is getting a lot of traffic (10.000 visits per hour or higher) in those time periods.
Are you using a shared hosting account?
/Siggy
Karen says:
Very handy tips, Sig! You mentioned optimal W3 Total Cache & WP-SmushIt settings to improve site speed. I found it quite hard to follow in a podcast. Would it be possible to provide a written summary?
Btw, would you advise installing all the below or only a selection (if so, which ones)?
Async JS and CSS
EWWW Image Optimizer
Advanced Lazy Load
Unveil Lazy Load
Autoptimize
Do they clash with one another or slow down a site? I’m using W3 Total Cache & WP-SmushIt.
Thanks!
Siggy says:
Hey Karen,
WP Smush.it is an image compression plugin. I recommend using Kraken.io (paid service, $5/month) as they fully optimize images. Smush.it does not fully optimize images.
Written summary – Sure .. go to http://quickfalcon.com/course/ and sign up. All the info is in there. :)
Regarding these plugins – Some plugins are doing the same .. I’ll group them below. Only pick one from each group.
Javascript and CSS optimizers
Async JS and CSS
Autoptimize
Image lazy loading plugins
Advanced Lazy Load
Unveil Lazy Load
Image compression plugins
WP-Smush.it
EWWW Image Optimizer
Now, that said, here is my recommended plugin stack:
W3 Total Cache
Kraken.io Image Optimizer
BJ Lazy Load (for lazy loading images and iframes)
Autoptimize (only for the CSS)
If you don’t want to pay money for optimizing your images, I suggest using EWWW Image Optimizer rather than WP Smush.it.
Hope this helps :)
/Siggy
Alex says:
Good stuff!
So true: 1 second waiting for a site to load, leads to an additional 8% on your visitors beeing pissed off scale!
Ill start applying right away!
Alex
Siggy says:
Awesome, Alex! :)
How long did your website take to load before optimizing?
How long does your website take to load now?
Cheers,
Siggy
Gael Breton says:
loved this, I just started a journey to make all our sites faster using these tips, changing host etc. I’ll report on the results when I’m done :).
Siggy says:
Cool! :)
Can you share your results? :)
/Siggy
Adam Najak says:
Just got my 10 minute free consultation video from Siggy :)
Cant wait to get this ecommerce site optimised which is shockingly slow.
Siggy says:
Hey Adam,
Please share with us how fast your website is after the optimization ;)
/Siggy