Jetpack quietly rolled out an update that may or may not have triggered a notification in your WordPress backend for a new feature for speeding up your website. They’ve essentially expanded access to their global content delivery network (CDN) to serve static files in addition to images.
What this means is that images and static files can be served off Automattic’s ultra-fast servers instead of your own web host’s server. Not that we’re implying your web host is slow, it’s just that theirs is really really fast.
About half of the sites we manage that are powered by WP and have Jetpack installed received the below notification.
The other half did not. Meaning we had to go into Jetpack and manually turn on the new CDN for static files like JavaScript and CSS.
If your WordPress backend didn’t trigger a notification visit WP Admin/Jetpack/Settings/Writing and look for the Performance & Speed section.
Aside from providing ongoing SEO and paid search service, Jtree also offers a wide range of single-use consultation services designed to assist businesses and agencies with increasing website exposure in Google.
From site health and migrations to keyphrase intelligence and crawl testing, we offer a plethora of services for under $500. Here is a list of our most requested consulting services that cost less than $500.
Test a website with our crawler and receive a listing of optimization issues that include recommendations.
Optimize blog posts by reviewing content and providing guidance.
Improve organic search engine positioning by auditing a key landing page.
Provide an analysis featuring recommendations for speeding up a website.
Give the best options for preserving and improving optimization for a new website, migration or redesign.
Help with a new idea by providing an assessment of historical organic and paid search term volumes.
Troubleshoot search engine issues like site indexation and Google Knowledge Panel website information.
Monitor for site issues and provide weekly analytic reporting for three months.
Make sure Google Ads, AdWords, AdSense, Alerts, My Business and/or Search Console are configured correctly.
Assess the best options for monetizing a website.
Oftentimes it makes sense to have us assist your team with specific areas of interest. For companies that need to address all of the above issues and more we offer ongoing SEO and search engine advertising service.
When Google posts about something that could be a major factor about how web pages are ranked, it’s always a good idea to listen. When Google blogs, releases news, speaks on camera and blogs some more about the same thing – it’s time to do more than just take note.
Just like the fuzz, the big “G” typically likes to warn us before a smack-down is coming. In this case, it’s a potential Search Engine rankings smack-down.
In a nutshell; G-unit is telling us that slow websites could soon be ranked lower regardless of other factors like number of quality backlinks and other On-Page SEO factors. They have even provided a site performance tool for testing any website you have added to Google Webmaster Tools. What this tool does is show how fast your site (or blog) loads in comparison to other sites/blogs, in addition to some tips (not always useful) to increase load-times.
Note: Once in Google Webmaster Tools, click on a website, then click on ‘Labs’ (left-column) and finally ‘Site Performance’ to use Google’s Site Performance tool.
Google allows you take it a few steps further by providing access to their open-source anti-latency tool AKA Page Speed. A Firebug/Firefox extension that runs several best practice tests on your web server (the physical location where your site is stored) and front end code. Page Speed takes a deeper look at issues related to the overall load-times of your website and provides suggestions for increasing speed.
If you’re not into the Google tools, you’re in luck. Here’s another tool that tests your page speed. This tool can help you identify slow loading items for removal, and is a little more useful than Google’s site performance tool in terms of identifying items that can easily be removed or streamlined.
Benefits of Increasing Site Speed
The obvious – not having it work against you in the form of ranking penalties
Bandwidth Efficiency – the faster your site loads reduces the amount of bandwidth required to load it (lower web hosting cost)
Usability – site visitors like fast loading websites; helps increase stickiness and decrease bounce-rates
Environmental – faster, more efficient websites increase the efficiency and resource management of the world wide web as a whole
If you’ve noticed site speed issues by using the tools above, give us a shout, we’ve been successfully speeding-up web content for businesses for over a decade.
When Google posts about something that could be a major factor about how web pages are ranked, it’s always a good idea to listen. When Google blogs, releases news, speaks on camera and blogs some more about the same thing – it’s time to do more than just take note.