Your blog loading speed increases blog SEO. A blog that takes less than 2 secs to load gets lower bounce rate and also more preference by Google and Visitors.
A blogger blog must be fast on mobile phones (mobile friendly) and on laptops. This is why many bloggers work very hard to increase their blog loading speed. I personally avoid blogs that take a time to load.
Speeding up your website is very easy but quite demanding. Many bloggers add too many widgets, inline CSS, JavaScripts and large images but still expect their blog to be fast loading.
A fast loading blogger blog has an edge over other blogs.
#fact - 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.
11 Killer Tips To Speed Up You Blog
1. Learn To Use PageSpeed Insights
Before judging your blog for loading slow, it is proper to run a page speed test and see what script is affecting your blog loading speed. PageSpeed Insights is a free online web performance tool developed by Google to help you run speed test of your blog.
PageSpeed Insight tool helps you speed up your blog by displaying the problems of your website and also recommend best solutions to it.
2. Optimize/Minimize Images
Images contribute to the reduced loading speed of most blogger templates. Adding large or too many image file to every post makes your blog reduce in speed.
It is recommended you minify all images before your upload them to your Blogspot blog. Images should be in Kilobytes (KB) and not MegaBytes (MB). You can easily do this using free online and desktop tools.
- Completely Compress, Resize And Optimize Images For Blog Post
- How To Optimize Blogger Images To Increase PageSpeed.
3. Use Less Widgets
As a blogger wanting to speed up your blog, you should start prioritizing widgets by removing widgets that are not necessary. By adding too many widgets at the sidebar and blog header, you are killing your site load speed.
Important widgets tend to be subscription box, Popular post, about author widget and a few more. This will help to increase your blog load speed. Aside from using fewer widgets, Use little or no widget in your mobile template.
Mobile sites can only make smaller requests, adding too many widgets on mobile templates will kill not only your site mobile friendliness but also the speed.
4. Minify CSS Codes
CSS codes define the look and feel of a theme. i.e without CSS, your template will look plain, ugly and anything not good for the eyes. This is why CSS is used to define colours, fonts, style etc. Not minifying the CSS code of your blog will affect your blog negatively.
You can find you CSS codes right above ]]></b:skin>. Using the PageSpeed tool, you will be shown a Minify CSS option. Fix it and your blog will load faster.
5. Add Image LazyLoad Plugin
LazyLoad Plugin is a Jquery function that simply delays the loading of your blog images. Using LazyLoad will make your texts and important sections show before the images are loaded.
LazyLoad also loads your images on scroll with animations i.e as you scroll down your blog, all your images are loaded one by one thereby speeding up your BlogSpot blog.
6. Use Asynchronous Versions Of JavaScripts Like Jquery
JavaScript is a major set back to quick page loading. It delays the website until the entire script is being loaded. We often use many of such scripts such Jquery, and many others on our blog.
Using the Asynchronous version of such scripts simply delay the loading of the script. By doing this, the plugin works fine and your blog load really fast. Google recommends Asynchronous scripts this is why they have implemented it in Adsense and AMP scripts.
To do this simply add async=' ' to your javascript. an example below.
<script async='async' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js' type='text/javascript'/>7. Optimize External CSS Links
CSS codes load both internally and Externally. In tip 4, I explained why and how you should minify CSS codes, unfortunately, that same procedure won't work for External CSS Links.
External CSS links cause more damage to loading speed. By using external links such as FontAwesome, Google Fonts etc your site will have to make a lot of HTTP requests. Therefore, It is recommended you optimize these scripts or avoid using them.
8. Use Google AMP
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is the blessing of 2017. Google AMP is designed to make your blog load fast on mobile devices and also on laptop devices.
With AMP, you can add lazy loading iframes, carousels, accordions, images, videos, audio players, advertisements etc and all these won't affect your blog loading time.
Google AMP is officially the best way to add widgets and speed up any blog. It is very easy to setup and quick to use. I am currently making my blog AMP ready.
9. Reduce Number Of Post On Homepage
The higher the number of post on the homepage, the more images, CSS, JavaScript requests your site will make. Reducing the number of posts per page will improve your blogger blog loading speed.
You can easily do this by going to Layout >> Blog >> Edit >> Number of posts on main page
10. Use Automatic Read More
Adding a jump break (read more) helps to cut off a buck of work for your browser. Assuming you have 3 posts on the homepage, each post with at least 3 images.
Your browser would have to load all 3 images.But if you make use of the automatic read more plugin, your site will only load one image per post.
- Learn How To Use Default Blogger Jump Break (Read More)
- Blogger Auto Read More With Thumbnail - OgbongeBlog Style
11. Remove Default Blogger CSS and JavaScript
I have explained how CSS and JavaScript affect the loading of your blog. Blogger has inbuilt CSS and JavaScript. These two scripts are a major issue for default BlogSpot template users. There are tagged as rendering blocking scripts because they stop the browser from loading other blog contents.
PageSpeed tool will always show the scripts in the image above and it is recommended you do away with it by adding the codes manually or optimizing the loading.
These 11 killer tips to increase blogger blog loading speed will speed up your website if properly followed. The major reasons why you should consider increasing your blog load speed is because.
Effect Of Slow Blog Loading Speed.
- Destroys SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Increase Bounce rates
- Reduces Blog Traffic by 40%
- Less preference from Search Engines.
- Users will just hate your blog.
More From Author.
Properly SEO optimizing a blogger blog requires increasing the speed of the blog. Hopefully, after speeding up with your blog with these 11 killer tips, your blogger blog will get less bounce rate, more affiliate earnings. Feel free to share "11 Killer Tips To Increase Blogger Blog Loading Speed" with your friends.
Hi John
ReplyDeleteyour article is great and i implemented your point 6 and 7 and got good results. but i am unable to locate the default blogger css links on my blogger template. Can you explain little more how to get rid of these two css files.
Your articles help a lot for me to improve my blog page speed Thanks
Asim am glad it's working well for you.
DeleteI am working on a post which will show you how to remove default blogger JS and CSS.
Awesome article jhon.
ReplyDeleteThank you Jalil
Delete