| User | Post |
|
8:05 am
October 16, 2011
|
The Frugal Toad
| | |
| Member | posts 587 | 
|
|
|
Post edited 8:52 am – October 16, 2011 by thefrugaltoad
I have a sinking feeling that the last Panda Update really penalized my site. I can no longer see my homepage in search results and I did a quick search on a couple key words I used to rank for and am no longer finding results.
One reason I know for sure was the slow page load time. I ran a web page performance test at webpagetest.org on 10/13 and Total Load time was 37sec and First Byte time was 30sec, ouch! I new I had an issue but did not realize it was that bad. I'm also note sure if something was skewing those results, like the fact that I have my site on a shared server.
Paul from DQYDJ went above and beyond in helping me fix a 301 redirect issue that I had and provided some other great advice to help me get the Total Load Time down to 7sec. I need to get this down to 2-3 in a hurry though.
My Questions:
1) How can I determine why my homepage is no longer showing in Google search results?
2) Are you noticing slow load time when visiting The Frugal Toad ?
3) I am running W3 Total Cache and am having issues with pages not being cached. Has anyone had similar problems and how were you able to correct them?
4) Any other tips to reduce the page load time would be appreciated. I am using yslow (C 77) and pagespeed (86) and have fixed the easy items and am stuck on how to fix the others.
|
|
|
|
|
8:09 am
October 16, 2011
|
Squirrelers
| | |
| Member | posts 986 |
|
|
|
I can answer question #2 above – I didn't notice any troubles with site load time for Frugal Toad. Seemed fine to me!
|
|
|
|
|
8:30 am
October 16, 2011
|
MissThrifty
| | UK | |
| Member | posts 46 |
|
|
|
If this has only just happened, wait a day or so before triggering the panic alarm, as it may just be Google fiddling around with stuff (for want of a better phrase). We sometimes see the same kind of thing with blogs at work – i.e. pages slipping, sliding, disappearing and miraculously reappearing.
|
|
|
|
|
8:48 am
October 16, 2011
|
The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
| Admin
| posts 1935 |
|
|
|
I would agree that you should wait as well.
Also, do you have and XML sitemap, and are you setup on Webmaster Tools with Google? It really helps to ping Google your sitemap, as they will update your site more quickly.
|
|
|
|
|
9:00 am
October 16, 2011
|
The Frugal Toad
| | |
| Member | posts 587 |
|
|
|
Squirrelers – Thanks, that is good to know. I have done several tests and they all show load times above 7-8 secs and my site in bottom 2%.
Miss T – Good advice as always. I lost my page rank so I am a little concerned about the damage.
TCI – Yes I do have XML sitemap installed and working properly, thanks!
|
|
|
|
|
9:04 am
October 16, 2011
|
The College Investor
| | San Diego, CA | |
| Admin
| posts 1935 |
|
|
|
Cool, check your search traffic in webmaster tools and see if it correlates.
|
|
|
|
|
9:23 am
October 16, 2011
|
20s Finances
| | |
| Admin
| posts 1147 |
|
|
|
Paul,
I have noticed that your site loads unusually slow. It just took my at least 7 seconds to load your site, whereas a few others from yakezie only 1-2 secs.
One tip that I have heard is to only upload small versions of pictures. If you are uploading large images (not sure if you are or not), it can take a long time for things to load.
I hope you are able to get it resolved soon. I wish I knew more to be able to help.
|
|
|
|
|
9:35 am
October 16, 2011
|
OneCentAtatime
| | Florida, USA | |
| Member
| posts 1778 |
|
|
|
Paul,
see this (from your home page source)
| <!– W3 Total Cache: Page cache debug info:
|
| |
Engine: disk: enhanced
|
| |
Cache key: _index.html
|
| |
Caching: disabled
|
| |
Reject reason: Cookie is rejected
|
| |
Status: not cached
|
| |
Creation Time: 7.039s
|
| |
Header info:
|
| |
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT |
Check your cache expiry setting on "browser Cache" section. I see a big load time for your site.
You have a plugin called sexybookmarks, which is adding a lot of junk javascript content on your page.
|
|
|
|
|
10:34 am
October 16, 2011
|
Tony Chou @ Investorz' Blog
| | |
| Member | posts 643 |
|
|
|
1) Google randomly tends to hit certain websites. There is often no exact reason. But if you're getting a sudden influx of backlinks, copying other peoples' content (which I'm sure you're not), then Google will penalize you. But like I said, most of the times it's just random.
2). And you're site seems to load pretty fast for me.
|
|
|
|
|
12:49 pm
October 16, 2011
|
The Frugal Toad
| | |
| Member | posts 587 |
|
|
|
20sfinances said:
Paul,
I have noticed that your site loads unusually slow. It just took my at least 7 seconds to load your site, whereas a few others from yakezie only 1-2 secs.
One tip that I have heard is to only upload small versions of pictures. If you are uploading large images (not sure if you are or not), it can take a long time for things to load.
I hope you are able to get it resolved soon. I wish I knew more to be able to help.
That is on my list of things to check and I'm sure that is part of the problem.
Thanks Cory!
|
|
|
|
|
12:55 pm
October 16, 2011
|
The Frugal Toad
| | |
| Member | posts 587 |
|
|
|
SB – I installed W3 Total Cache some time ago and left the defaults in place for the most part. Will check that now.
Tony – I had 2-3K in backlinks recently added over the last couple of months, mostly from being added to blogrolls. Could that have been cause for losing PR?
|
|
|
|
|
1:43 pm
October 16, 2011
|
PK @ DQYDJ
| | The Intersection of Politics, Economics and Personal Finance. | |
| Moderator
| posts 361 |
|
|
|
Paul,
Glad we got the 301 redirect working yesterday – but yeah, I'm still seeing inconsistency in load times between pages. For example, I load your home page in about 2-3 seconds, but clicking on a category link takes in the 7-8 range.
You should check if you have W3 in preview mode or deploy. You might have to do a hefty amount of server side things to get it doing what you want. Another option, as I mentioned to you yesterday, is just get an account with CloudFlare and let them worry about the caching, haha. They are free for the basic version. I can't comment on their claim for better security, but they definitely have sped us up a bit. The only slightly annoying thing is you'll want to log into CloudFlare and enable debug mode to get around the caching when you change things on your site.
|
|
|
|
|
12:35 pm
October 17, 2011
|
JP
| | |
| Member | posts 45 |
|
|
|
Out of curiosity, what does the Great Google (or other SEs) consider a good site load time or is there an average time to shoot for?
|
|
|
|
|
4:00 am
October 18, 2011
|
Tony Chou @ Investorz' Blog
| | |
| Member | posts 643 |
|
|
|
thefrugaltoad said:
SB – I installed W3 Total Cache some time ago and left the defaults in place for the most part. Will check that now.
Tony – I had 2-3K in backlinks recently added over the last couple of months, mostly from being added to blogrolls. Could that have been cause for losing PR?
That certainly can! Pat from SPI once mentioned that he had a niche site where he got his VA to build alot of backlinks for him. I'm guessing he did it pretty quickly, because within a few weeks, he was ranking 4th for the keyword.
He fixed the problem by adding a lot more content. I think Google has a backlinks/posts ratio. If the ratio is too high, they might think you're building backlinks unnaturally (which you're not).
|
|
|
|
|
1:54 pm
October 18, 2011
|
Jeff @ Sustainable Life Blog
| | |
| Member | posts 964 |
|
|
|
Load time wasnt too bad for me.
|
|
|
|
|
1:57 pm
October 18, 2011
|
Jeff @ Sustainable Life Blog
| | |
| Member | posts 964 |
|
|
|
If you're looking for more stuff about speed, check cloudflare https://www.cloudflare.com/
|
|
|
|
|
5:35 pm
October 18, 2011
|
SavingMentor
| | |
| Member | posts 217 |
|
|
|
We've been talking a lot about this panda update here if you want more info FT:
http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..da-update/
Is the 7-8s load time coming from Google Webmaster Tools or from webpagespeedtest?
The reason I ask is because WPST reports very high (but accurate I think) number for load times because it measures things to completely load including all external code, images, etc. I think Google Webmaster Tools focuses more on having most of the content loaded and probably doesn't count external stuff as much.
So if you are 7-8s in GWT – you probably still need some big improvements. If you are 7-8s in WPST – then you are probably fine. The side by side page load comparison WPST has for comparing multiple sites can be helpful to see how you compare to others.
|
|
|
|
|
8:39 am
October 19, 2011
|
MoneyBeagle
| | |
| Member
| posts 1466 |
|
|
|
SavingMentor, thanks for referencing those pages. I'm going to add a check on both and will probably need to tackle some load time issues on my site, I would imagine!
|
|
|
|
|
12:56 pm
October 19, 2011
|
sterlingeffort
| | |
| Member | posts 14 |
|
|
|
Post edited 12:57 pm – October 19, 2011 by sterlingeffort
Got no problem loading your site here dude. Where are you hosting the site?
Jay
|
|
|
5:06 pm
October 19, 2011
|
The Frugal Toad
| | |
| Member | posts 587 |
|
|
|
Post edited 5:08 pm – October 19, 2011 by thefrugaltoad
SavingMentor said:
We've been talking a lot about this panda update here if you want more info FT:
http://yakezie.com/forums/blog…..da-update/
Is the 7-8s load time coming from Google Webmaster Tools or from webpagespeedtest?
The reason I ask is because WPST reports very high (but accurate I think) number for load times because it measures things to completely load including all external code, images, etc. I think Google Webmaster Tools focuses more on having most of the content loaded and probably doesn't count external stuff as much.
So if you are 7-8s in GWT – you probably still need some big improvements. If you are 7-8s in WPST – then you are probably fine. The side by side page load comparison WPST has for comparing multiple sites can be helpful to see how you compare to others.
SM – I've been working really hard over the last few days to fix some issues that were causing the slow load times.
Cory from 20sfinances suggested I look at the image size of images on my site. That was one of the major tasks I had to do, resize all images but was worth it!
Paul from DQYDJ helped me fix a 301 redirect error as well as some other great suggestions.
Finally I was having issues with W3 Total Cache not working so I uninstalled it and installed WP Super Cache and have been happy with the results. I am continuing to look for ways to make my site faster as it is probably the main reason I lost my PR. Google had my load time as 10 sec on Oct 5th. I saw load times as high as 14sec!
Having said all that I just checked webpagetest.org and my Firstbyte Time was .324sec and Fully Loaded Time was 4.432sec! I am really pleased with that.
I would encourage everyone to add Firstbyte Time and Fully Loaded Time tests to a regular schedule of website performance checks. Try these two sites http://www.webpagetest.org and http://www.seositecheckup.com
|
|
|
|
Login
Search 
Home
Print this Topic 
Topic RSS 
