How do you make your Web site blazingly fast? This presentation describes what Google and end-users mean by "fast", and lists some tools to help you get better server response and page load times for your Web site.

1. Making Web Sites Fast
Greg Keith
www.seoservicesboulder.com

2. Why Should Web Sites Load Quickly?
● Home page with new visitor, best brand impression
● Image-rich sites, keep users engaged
● Web sites using full-page background images
● E-commerce sites, fast-loading pages increase sales

3. Does “Fast” Help?
Damn straight! Users bounce less, come back more, view more pages, buy
more products, share more links from faster sites. Data (Moz study Nov 2013)
says:
● Intuit (Velocity 2013) reduced page load times and saw:
– +3% conversions for every second reduced from 15 seconds to 7 seconds
– +2% conversions for every second reduced from seconds 7 to 5
– +1% conversions for every second reduced from seconds 4 to 2
● Obama for America campaign site (2011) Kyle Rush showed through A/B testing that a
3-second page time reduction (from 5 seconds to 2 seconds) improved onsite donations
by 14%, resulting in an increase of over $34 million in election contributions

4. What is “Fast”? Google
vs End-User
● Matt Cutts in Aug 2010: now we count speed, though page speed
is just one of 200+ Google ranking factors
● Moz study (Aug 2013):
– Is it overall page load time (TTLB)? No, surprisingly page load time in
seconds does not correlate with rankings
– Is it total size? No, search rankings do not correlate with total page size
– Only correlate with rankings is time to first byte (TTFB), meaning server
response time is most important
Take-away: For Google search rankings, improve server response

5. General Approach
● 80/20 rule – use the quickest, cheapest
methods to get a significant improvement
● Most importantly, aim for quick server
response and reduce the amount of data
sent between the client and the server
● Ensure that you don't reduce data so much that
image quality and richness of site experience is
lost

6. Front-End vs Back-End
Front-end pieces the Web
site owner can control: CMS
software (WordPress, Drupal,
Joomla), Web technologies
(CSS, JavaScript, Flash)
Back-end elements are on the server
(typically a Linux Apache MySQL PHP
stack):
- software versions
- Web server modules (mod_gzip,
mod_deflate, mod_SPDY, etc.)

7. (Front-End) Golden Rule
Almost all (80-90%) of the end-user response time is spent
downloading page components: images, stylesheets,
scripts, Flash, etc.

8. Get Your Feet Wet!
●
Images – Ensure your images are compressed with tools like Smush.It or
Kraken Image Optimizer plug-ins
●
Make CSS and JS small and tidy – ensure CSS and JavaScript files are
concatenated and minified.
●
Compression - Ensure compression is being used by the server, either gzip or
deflate (mod_gzip or mod_deflate, httpd -l if you have SSH access).
●
Caching - Ensure you have a full-featured caching plug-in like W3 Total Cache,
and configure it fully (including adding code to your .htaccess file if necessary).
●
Content Delivery Network – If you want to spend a little, you'll likely see
massive gains in speed by implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to
serve your content from multiple servers, so pages are served from the closest
server to the end-user.

9. Best Tools for Improvement
● Browser add-ons like:
– Yahoo's Yslow
– Google PageSpeed Insights
● Many SaaS site speed tools now
available like:
– pingdom.com
– zoompf.com
– gtmetrix.com (combines Yslow &
PageSpeed)

10. Yahoo YSlow

11. PageSpeed Insights: Mobile

12. PageSpeed Insights: Desktop

13. Using Pingdom: Grade

14. Using Pingdom: Waterfall

15. Using Pingdom: Page Analysis
s

16. Using Zoompf: Grade

17. Using GTMetrix: Grade

18. Better Way to
Optimize?
● Better way than just individual optimizing is
installing Google's mod_pagespeed into
Apache, providing speed enhancements
automagically.
● Is available from many hosting providers now,
but only available for VPS and dedicated
hosting, not for shared hosting servers.
● May be superseded by mod_SPDY.

19. Is Apache Still the
Top Web Server?
● Overall of all Web sites:Apache still serves
60.5%, Nginx 20.6%, IIS 13.9% (W3Techs).
● As of July 2013, top 1000 Internet sites were
running Nginx (34.9%), Apache (34.5%) and
Microsoft IIS (~16%), .
● WPEngine service runs Nginx, EverCache,
NetDNA CDN (monthly plans $30/100/250 for
1/10/25 WP installs)

20. Questions/Comments/Rants?
Greg Keith
www.seoservicesboulder.com