Last week I did a post on The Need For Mobile Speed. Over the weekend I used the points in that post to increase the mobile speed of three more of my blogs. Those blogs were my Buy Online Lotto Tickets, Get Online Lottery and A Loving Memorial. While it was easier having a template to follow I found that different sites have different hurdles to jump. I persevered all the same because mobile speed is important!
Why Mobile Speed Is Important
As I mentioned in my previous post my latest need for mobile speed was brought on by my good mate Mitch’s post. You’ll find links to his exceptional posts about his search for improving mobile speed in my previous post. Mobile speed is important to me because I need to keep Google happy in order to get a good listing in their search engines.
Having to please Google now makes me laugh with the knowledge of previous posts such as Google Sucks and Does Google Control Your Blog. There are a whole lot of other posts where I have a go at Google but this one is about why mobile speed is important not about Google’s many failings.
As you can see, the results were not as good as my easy Sports Betting blog but it was the best I could do. I’m more than happy that everything was in the green.
Apart from keeping Google happy mobile speed is important if you’re at all interested in making money online. This is because, and Google knows this, more and more people are accessing the internet via their smart phones. I think you will find this article on mobile marketing statistics very interesting. If a site is too sluggish people these days won’t wait to let it load. They’re going to look elsewhere and those sites that haven’t bothered with mobile speed miss out. Better for the rest of us right?
Hosting Is Important For Mobile Speed
Once again, while there is a vast improvement, its still not as good as my sports site. I played around with settings for ages and then it hit me. They’re hosted on a shared hosting site whereas my sports betting blog is hosted with Inmotion hosting, a VPS host!
One of the problems I was having with these two blogs was that the leverage caching wasn’t working. This is something that my caching plugin handle so well previously. After a lot of wall banging I contacted support and they were kind enough to edit my .htaccess file. Thanks to all the guys at Greengeeks.
Mobile Speed Is Affected By Plugins
You may not know this but too many plugins or the wrong plugins can really affect your speed. Some plugins are so poorly designed that having them activated can slow down your blog to a virtual crawl. On the other hand, some plugins, like caching plugins, are essential for mobile speed. Another plugin I found that improved the mobile speed of some of my blogs is Widget Options. This plugin allowed me to select which widgets showed up when the blog was accessed by a mobile user. You can even select whether they showed up on the home page for desktop users. This way you also speed up your home page.
As you can see the results for my Loving Memorial blog was exceptional. While this blog was also hosted on Greengeeks it has the least amount of plugins installed which simply proves my last point.
Did I mention the importance of themes at all? I should have because the theme you’re using may be what is slowing you down.
