Test how fast your pages load.

Use this free test. Page load time can actually impact your Google Quality Score.

Faster is always better.

The most common cause of slow page loading times is bloated graphics. Make sure your graphics serve a purpose for being included in the first place. Then make sure any graphic you do include has been optimized to be as small as possible – in byte size. Use JPEG, PNG, and GIF as appropriate to reduce the file size of all graphic elements.

The page analyzer below will measure load times and provide feedback on how you can reduce the load time of your web and blog pages. Websites that include calls to databases (WordPress) and sites that include PHP programs and run Javascript can have added overhead as a result. Graphic elements are a big thing to check, but not the only thing. Run the analyzer and see where you can make improvements.

Finally, the speed of your hosting service can also have a huge impact. You might be able to get by with shared hosting if you take the time to make sure your pages are “lean and mean”. Slow pages will not please the “Google gods”.

Web Page Analyzer – Free web page analysis tool calculates page size, composition, and download time. Gives speed recommendations based on best practices for usability, HCI, and website optimization.

While graphic are one of the first things you might look at there are a host of other things that might keep your site from leaping from the starting gate. These are code based issues involving JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. If you are running your site on WordPress you have database calls to contend with as well. Pages that never change can be converted to static HTML which are then loaded instead of the PHP file that would load otherwise.

There’s a nice article on speeding up WordPress by making some code changes over at Lorelle on WordPress.

Another thing you can do with a WordPress installation, is use one of the caching plugins. I use WP Super Cache which streamlines your code for you. W3 Total Cache is another popular option. After you install one of the caching plugins and configure it, run the Web Page Analyzer linked above and see if your load time improve. You should see a dramatic improvement.

If content is king – then speed must be his queen. Take the time to manage your page load times and Google just might reward you with a higher quality score and higher page rank as well.