July 2013 Newsletter
**** The 4specs Perspective
The Google search ranking criteria includes overall page speed. Recently, page speed information was moved from Google Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics. This provides more access to their website speed results and suggestions. Here is how to get there:
Open your Google Analytics page, click on Content, then click on Site Speed, then click on Speed Suggestions. See left image for locations.
The page will open to a view like this:
Review your overall page speed - I understand Google views 3 seconds or under as an acceptable target time. 4specs is typically 1.5 to 2 seconds.
Then click on the Page Speed Suggestions for each page - second column from the left. A new window will open and you can see the specific suggestions for that page. The first time through I reviewed 4specs and found the same suggestion for every page. I went and made the changes - changing how we served the character set and the caching for our css file.
Here is an example of suggestions for one of our pages, showing that two images could be further compressed. Since then I used Photoshop Elements (around $100) to compress the images further - typically to a JPG Medium or 30%.
While working on your page speed, also convert any flash images to a standard image to make your website usable on iPads.
Start by cleaning up the site-wide suggestions and then tackle each page.
Suggestions and comments are always appreciated.
Colin
--------------------------------------
Colin Gilboy
Publisher - 4specs
Contact us