Blog Page Load Speed is one of my personal obsessions And not only because Google have decided to use it as one of the ranking factors but also because I KNOW that it impacts how your blog manages to retain the readers.

Obviously it helps if content on your blog also presents some information useful to your readers but hey, that is non-technical aspect I will not be talking about right now! What I’m concerned with is how to Decrease Your Blog Page Load Speed using technology and still retain functionality!

On April 9 Google has officially announced that site speed is now part of the web search ranking algorithm. This wasn’t really a big surprise for anyone who was paying attention to what was happening. First Matt Cutts announced that Google is “considering” to start using Page Load Speed as one of the ranking factors during his November presentation at PubCon, then in December Google has added a nifty little tool to the Labs Section of Webmaster Tools – Site Performance.

I don’t know about you but when Google ads a tool that allows you to see how your blog is seen by others, better yet – how it performs compared to others – I pay close attention, as they don’t just do it out of whim. And it actually makes sense as faster sites (blogs) provide a better visitor experience and I have covered the topic in several of my older posts:

• WordPress Guide: Howto Force Your Blog Load Fast
• Turn WordPress Into Speed Demon
• How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog By Getting Rid Of Bloat

And a few more posts you can find by searching for “page load speed” but I leave that option to you! Instead I want to concentrate on what is happening now and how your WordPress blog Page Rank is impacted by site speed.

Traffic is a lifeblood of any website or blog and we all do what we can to get as many of visitors as we can. Today I want to expand on idea of optimizing your online business by re-evaluating it and talk about…

How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog By Getting Rid Of Bloat!

Page load speed is extremely important for your blog not only because it allows your blog to be indexed faster by search engines but also because it helps you retain visitors.

People arrive to your blog pages from multiple sources and often searching for the solutions to their problems. Needless to say that if your page takes its sweet time to load – you might loose the person whose attention span is about as long as a toddler.

Present Your Content as fast as possible – reduce bounce rate and turn visitors into readers! And here are few tips that should help you….

Since upgrading to WordPress 2.7.1 I have discovered that my home page was loading extremely slow. Doing the most obvious I have discovered that one of my more useful plugins decided to go bad and start throwing errors in numbers that were quickly filling the error log.

A Classic Case of Good Plugin Going Bad due to the lack of support and updates from original author. Popularity Contest plugin by Alex King was one of the must have plugins on my blog but author stopped supporting it since WordPress 2.5

So the question is – how would you address it?

I have been using SezWho universal profile service on my WordPress blog for a while now and I love the options they provide. Well, as everything else develops – these guys just came out with KILLER enhancements. I know that with announcement of Automattic acquiring Intense Debate it might be a choice you need to make yourself later but I love the options SezWho provides!