Blog Load Times Optimized

There are numerous bloggers now on the crafty circuit, as part of my Design Team commitments

I visit a good percentage of them on a daily basis.

Actually I had to stop doing so because so many blogs

are bogged down with nonsense that creates extremely long page load times.

For me I found it not to be worth my time.

I bet when you track your blog hits you will find it to be true about not having repeat visits because of your slow load time.

Also Google has updated the algorithm they use to place the blogs with optimized load times

higher up on the search engine.

I know, that is a HUGE deal!

It is also stated that the standard load time should be 

3 Seconds.

Here is where my blog performs when I used Gomez:

2.18 Seconds

Yes, I am even under the normal standard;)

You can try some of these links to find out your blog load time.

Stopwatch

Gomez (this is what I have used)

There are three main things you can do easily:

1.  Image Sizes, 

 the main reason for long load times.

This also effects the load time of your linked blogs if you are using the blogger fave blog list widget!

Please take special note here because this is slowing everyone down and I personally love showing off your images and links in my side bar.  There are options to take where you can show just the blogger logo with the link or just show the link alone.

2.  How many posts you are loading on your front page?

10 or LESS is Optimized. 

3.  Third party links  

Today we shall talk about

Images

Since most of us Crafty bloggers are in the game to show off what we have done you want to make sure you are keeping your image at a good resolution and a smaller size at the same time.

Most galleries now will not accept a file larger than 300K, that is a good start.

However not optimized enough!

I use PSE so I will only be telling you  how I use that platform.

Open up PSE

Open your photo file you are wanting to use

Crop and edit your image

making sure you use your watermark

(Save for WEB)

this is a very critical step.

Here is my optimized image at these saved web settings

141.9K using Gif-perceptual-transparency

I play with mine to see how low I can go and still maintain a quality image for posting

 however, this is what I use the most.

So check out your load time and see how you can optimize your image files.

I will be back with more talking about your Main load page next.

Thanks for stopping by today;)