How To Enhance Loading Speed for Increased Traffic

Blogging 101: 5 Ways to Increase Blog Traffic by Enhancing Blog Loading Speed

A s bloggers, we work so hard to create quality blog content hoping to add value to our readers. However in reality, not many readers actually read our blog because we failed to optimize it to drive traffic to our blogs.  In this post, I will share with you 5 Ways To Increase Blog Traffic By Enhancing Loading Speed.

How Loading Speed Impacts Your Blog Traffic

You googled for blog reviews on a certain product that you are keen on getting & clicked open the link to one of the search results hoping to find out more. The link took forever to load as it was stuffed with too much scripts and images. You took a deep breath and waited for 30s… Then the spinning icon spun for 60s.. Frustrated with the wait, you closed the tab on your web browser and decide to read other reviews instead.

Picture yourself in the shoes of your potential blog readers. You can potentially lose massive blog traffic if your loading speed is SLOW despite having awesome content! 

Increase Blog / Website Traffic by Enhancing Loading Speed Now! Click To Tweet

So how to salvage this?

#1: Choose A Reliable Host

Choose a Reliable Host

When starting out, a shared host might seem like a bargain (“Unlimited page views!”). It comes at another cost: incredibly slow site speed and frequent down time during high traffic periods.

Shared Hosting = many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet Click To Tweet

Though sharing is caring, sharing might not be a good idea when choosing your hosting service. 

If you plan on publishing popular stuff, you’re killing yourself by running your WordPress site on shared hosting. 

The stress of your site going down after getting a big feature is enough to create a few early gray hairs: don’t be a victim, invest in proper hosting. 

If you plan on publishing popular stuff, u’re killing yourself by running on shared hosting. Click To Tweet

When selecting a reliable hosting service, support is very important as I would expect immediate solutions to my problems. I will lookout for hosting providers that provide dependable 24/7 chat support with a general hotline to dial. 

I have shared with you my nightmare with my previous hosting provider in my Rebranding My Blog post earlier. Hence, it really makes sense to invest on a good host as a foundation.

Click to read about my Rebranding Journey!

The WordPress host we continually recommend is…

✓ WP Engine managed WordPress hosting 

✓ Vodien Internet Solutions Pte Ltd (recommended by myself as I’m based in Singapore)

Managed Hosting Service = client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else Click To Tweet

#2: Optimise Your Homepage

Optimise Your HomePage

The Landing Page is often the most frequently visited page when compared to your other pages. Hence it is important to make it load optimally so as retain your readership for the longest possible time.

Simple steps to optimise your Homepage include:

• Show excerpts instead of full posts
• Reduce number of posts shown on Homepage (i.e. 5-7 posts)
• Remove unnecessary sharing widgets (include them only in posts)
• Remove inactive / redundant plugins
• Keep it MINIMAL! Readers are here for CONTENT, not fanciful widgets that hinders browsing experience!

#3: Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Use a CDN

What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?

Basically a CDN takes all your static files from your site (i.e. CSS, Javascript, images etc) & allow visitors download them in the shortest time by serving the files on servers that are closest to them.

The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered. Click To Tweet

I am currently using a free CDN – Cloudflare. However, if you would like to take your blogging game further, Muneeb recommends the MaxCDN as it is reasonably priced & their dashboard is user-friendly (with video tutorials that are idiot proof).

#4: Use an Efficient Caching Plugin

Use an Efficient Caching Plugin

Before I recommend you to download a Caching Plugin, I will first elaborate on what a Cache is. A cache is simply a temporary storage area. So whenever somebody visits your site for the first time, the web browser will automatically download all images, CSS files, Java Scripts etc into a temporary folder. So when the visitor proceeds to the next blog post / page of your blog, the page will load faster because of the static files stored in their browser cache.

By having a caching plugin alongside with a reliable CDN installed on your blog, you will significantly decrease your loading time and server resources to improve performance.

If you are on WordPress, we highly recommend you to download the W3 Total Cache plugin as it is extremely easy to install and activate.

#5: Add LazyLoad to Your Images

LazyLoad your images

In order to enhance your loading speed, you can have your blog images load as the user scrolls down the page instead of having the all images to load before the content becomes visible to the visitor.

If you’re on WordPress, you can download the BJ Lazy Load plugin to do this automatically.

How Do You Enhance Loading Speed?

I do hope that this blog post has shed some light on how you can optimise your site’s loading speed.

Do let me have your feedback on what you think about this post & perhaps share with me some other tips you have implemented to enhance your blog loading speed in the comment box below!