Do you have a slow-loading blog?
Sometimes, you need to ask yourself this clear question and sit with an honest answer to be straight with yourself. I came across a few slow blogs recently. A few seemed slow, even on mobile devices. This is an absolute no-no because if your blog loads slowly on mobile you know the thing is snail slow on my Chromebook or even on a basic laptop.
Please be straight with yourself because nobody grows and succeeds by lying to themselves. People who lie to themselves suffer horribly over the long haul because the truth sets you free but lying to yourself keeps you bound, miserable, and in many cases, sick and broke.
Bloggers often boast of lighting fast load times and really talk about their quick blogs but one visit from a phone or Chromebook tells a different story. The problem with slow-loading blogs is the Google slap down, first off, as Google needs fast loading blogs on page 1 of the search engine. Either you are quick, or, you are dead. But even deeper than Google, the Microwave Culture or better yet, the Mobile Culture of today seems to be dominant in society. Folks want updates super fast via their phones. If you cannot get information lightning-fast, you just move on to the next website. I happen to be pretty darn patient but if I cannot get a quick weather update from a site I just close it out and visit the next website. Few of us have the patience of Buddha when surfing the web, which makes it more important to ensure your blog loads super fast.
How can you speed things up?
Cut Bloat
Remove all signs of bloat to laser-lightning load your blog. Cut out extra ads, silly widgets, low-quality blog posts, and off-topic pages. See where you can trim the fat. All excess is bloat, and all bloat puts a heavy load on your server, slowing things down for no particular purpose, other than slowing things down.
Review Plug-Ins
Some plug ins are nightmares in terms of blog loading too. Do a speed test to find out the heaviest plug ins. Remove immediately if the plug in does not offer some spectacular function for your blog. Every plug in can be helpful in some way, shape or form but you need to weigh the weight of the thing against the function of the plug in. I deleted an SEO plug in weighing down and slowing down my site because the return was not worth the ridiculous load it had on my server.
Streamline Your Design
Ultimately, your blog needs only a few elements to create a pleasing experience for your readers. I just publish posts, pages, a little top menu and also an ad pointing to my eBooks on my sidebar. I need nothing else. Streamline your blog to build a razor-sharp, visually-pleasing, quick-loading site guaranteed to make readers happy.
Adopt the Beginner Mind
We all begin from zero. Think of it for just 1 second. No blogger has anything on their blog as a newbie because we need to add elements to empty, barren blogs. Adopt a beginner’s mindset to begin at zero and then work up from there, adding elements slowly, carefully and judiciously. Following this tip works well in conjunction with the prior tip.
If you want to avoid some beginner blogger nightmares I faced, buy my eBook.
Speeding up your blog often involves releasing more than anything else but you need to honest with yourself to address the pressing issue. Be straight with yourself to turn a slow-loading snail of a blog into a lightning-fast cheetah.