How to improve Time to First Byte? Page Load Speed
-
I am working with a ecommerce site that is having major issues with their load speed. The ttfb is...wait for it...7911 ms.
I am not even sure where to start with this issue. If you have any recommendations, it would be appreciated.
Is it the clients servers that are slow? They have went through multiple redesigns and have some code that could probably be deleted but I don't think it would make it that slow.
-
Hi Ian
These are all good suggestions. Accidentally (SSL excluded) these are all covered by modern CDNs, which do much more than just proxy.-
Memory vs. disk caching: Memory is faster
CDNs will cache from memory by providing free/low-cost access to very large pool of resource, which most website owners couldn't utilize otherwise. (each proxy location will have ~10 high-powered servers that allocate memory for caching)
-
Server configuration: Is your database on the same server as your web server? That's a problem, if true.
This is a core CDN capability. The cached web content is served from proxy while database complies in the background and serves the rest of the materials.
-
Database caching: Is your e-commerce system using it? The first hit on the database is a huge hit on performance.
This is a great suggestion and - unlike other points - this is not a default CDN feature. However, this problem can be solved by intelligent caching heuristic. What I mean is that by monitoring resource usage over large pool of visitors an intelligent CDN system can identify dynamically generated objects which are not often changed, yet still un-cached due to their dynamic "origin".
Pinpointing such objects and caching them in the way that ensures personalization and freshness will reduce the impact of database processing. For example, typical e-commerce site and will dynamically generate the product list from DB when in fact most products specifics (the image, the text, the pricing, etc) will not change over the product life-cycle. For all states and purposes these are static resources, yet they are being generated dynamically, for the lack of the better option...
If you CDN can identify such instances and move in to cache these parameters, you will benefit from 30-50% improvement, on top of the usual 30-40% CDN factor.
What I`m describing here is not future-tech but a patent-pending algorithms which are already used by the industry. You can find out more here:http://www.incapsula.com/the-incapsula-blog/item/414-advanced-caching-dynamic-through-learning
-
-
True TTFB is improved by changes to your basic server configuration, not a CDN. A CDN will improve delivery of static and cached files, but may not impact TTFB the way you need it to.
My gut tells me you need to look at:
- Database caching: Is your e-commerce system using it? The first hit on the database is a huge hit on performance.
- Memory vs. disk caching: Memory is faster
- SSL versus non-SSL for non-secure pages. SSL will slow performance and should only be used where security is an issue, like during checkout or on login pages.
- Server configuration: Is your database on the same server as your web server? That's a problem, if true.
-
Generally speaking, the best answer is to use a CDN.
CNDs proxy technology, which was designed to minimize "physical" distances between the site's content and browsers, directly influences TTFB. Being an in-house SEO for a CDN company I get a lot of questions about this from our support and clients. I have to admit, until recent Moz post, I wasn't aware of full implications of TTFB and considered it to be one of few page load speed related metrics. (http://moz.com/blog/how-website-speed-actually-impacts-search-ranking)This post really helped me get a better grasp on things. Interestingly enough, few month ago one of our clients Guest Posted in our blog about speed improvement gained by our free plan. Among other things, he mentioned 70% improvement in TTFB (grade going from F to A)
(http://www.incapsula.com/the-incapsula-blog/item/718-what-incapsula-free-did-for-my-site)At the time I didn't give it much attention. Because, like many others, I was focusing on overall load speeds....
I can't help but feel that this was a missed opportunity. This post could be even better with the added SEO angle...
If anyone here is interested in giving this a try and guest posting about it, I`ll be happy to provide all resources needed on our end. -
I guess by just looking at the IP, it's in Atlanta. I changed the settings on the page load tools to various places across the US so this shouldn't be a factor should it?
-
I thoroughly enjoyed your response Harald. I never would have considered switching from Amazon S3 to Amazon Cloud Space. The improved performance you experienced is amazing.
-
Hi Lhawk, First of all I advice you to look at below link for proper understanding of the Time to First Byte.
Time to first byte (TTFB)
I hope that above content helps you to understand the TTFB.
Now its time to reduce the TTFB which is most important for a web page because it overall reduces the loading time & helps to load page faster & overall website performance is increased.
For more details see the 12 steps to faster web pages.
I hope tat your query had been solved.
editor's note: source for this answer at http://www.creativedevelopment.com.au/web-design/reducing-time-to-first-byte-ttfb/
-
Where are the servers relative to your access point?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Photos or Video Best for Landing Pages?
My real estate brokerage firm is promoting a listing via advertising on LinkedIn. The advertising links to a landing page: http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/MidtownLawOfficeSublet3300SFBelowMarket Rather than photos, the landing page has a 1 minute video. So far we have had about 10 visits to the page. Visitors leave the landing page after a few seconds. So they are not looking at the video. Would it be better to replace the video with photos? Or is engagement generally better with video? My thinking is that business owners may not have the patience or the time for a video and they would more likely have the time and willingness to click on photos. I would be willing to test this further, but at $5/click it could get costly! Any thoughts?
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Kingalan1
Thanks,
Alan Rosinsky1 -
Tracking a Deposit Page Through Google Analytics: Which is a better way?
Good day to all, I do have game download website (Works like Google Play and Steam) and currently working on the deposit page which is payable by fund transfer and Paypal. The thing is I do not have a confirmation page that I can use to track all incoming successful and unsuccessful conversions for this deposit page. My question is, which is better to use for this kind of tracking a goal in Google Analytics? Are we going to use a virtual page or and event tracking method? How can I track users that visit the deposit page that weren't able to do a deposit attempt? Thanks for answering this question. Have a good day ahead.
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Francis.Magos0 -
SaaS Landing Page Copy
Hi We have a SaaS online invoicing software website. We want to optimize our landing page for conversion. Everything we read about conversion says Big H1 Copy, short, precise and catchy. 3 bullet points and thats it. Very very little copy. Question is is this bad for our SEO. Will google rank our home\landing page if we do not have lots of natural keyword copy? SEO and CRO are conflicting here aren't they? Thanks
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Studio330 -
Rich Snippets on service pages and how to aggregate?
Question about rich snippets.. I want to showcase reviews of the SERVICE's offered but I am not sure if I should include them on the service page, a review page or both. For example, we offer snow plowing and lawn care services and each service has its own page. I have reviews for both services under the my "testimonials" page. So, a couple questions. 1 - Should I pace a single review marked up on each service page? 2 - Does the review need to be a google review or can I use reviews from other sites? If not, do I need to notate that somehow using the schema vocabulary? Example, I have a 5 star review from thumbtrackDOTcom, is it ok to mark up the review and include a nofollow link? (No follow because thumbtrack is actually a competitor.) 3 - When I looked into creating an aggregate rich snippet I got confused / concerned. Is it ok to list multiple services as a product? Example: <div< span="">itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product"> <span< span="">itemprop="name">Lawn Care and Snow Removal</span<> <div< span="">itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscopeitemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating">
Conversion Rate Optimization | | dwallner
Rated <span< span=""> itemprop="ratingValue">4.5</span<>/5
based on <span< span=""> itemprop="reviewCount">4</span<> customer reviews</div></div<></div<> 4 - When I tested the code above, no stars showed up in the preview. Do I need to mark up products as well? Am I doing it completely wrong 🙂 Thanks for any advice!!0 -
Time spent downloading a page increased drasticly
Hi Guys, We have found increased "Time spend downloading a page" drastically. Our website: www.learnenglishindublin.com Our company is located in Ireland, so we moved our servers from US to Ireland at the beginning of December. Also before increasing 'Time spend downloading a page" I did: I have installed plugins JCH Optimize (plugin is optimizing CSS and Javascripts [merging them]) I have installed ScriptsDown - which is moving all scripts to bottom of site. Pingdom tools shows that site is loading average of 2.7 secs. Pages are cached. Gzip is used. Our SEO rankings dropped from 1 page to 2 page. We have gone up in Google Maps search. Image sizes are about 1.7MB Any idea how things have actually gotten worse after this “improvement”? Thanks, Olivia increased.jpg
Conversion Rate Optimization | | Olivia_led0 -
How can I improve my Adsense CTR / CPC?
Here's one page where my Ads' setup can be seen: http://www.gameseducativos.com/guarda-do-zoologico/quebra-cabecas
Conversion Rate Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Proper Landing Pages for PPC ads
One of our sites is for a local Promotional Products company that focuses on local big businesses to set up accounts with. We are trying to grow our customer base with this site through use of a PPC campaign, but are unsure of where to send them. We were thinking about a page with content about what we do and our contact information, or putting together videos with this information to send them to. Does anyone have any advice for a killer landing page that not only is good for getting conversions for promotional products through PPC, but also could get us organic traffic? Thanks in advance for the help!
Conversion Rate Optimization | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Page Title Tags - SEO vs CRO ?
Hi everyone, Thanks to what seems to be a recent(ish) algo change in Google, some of our more targeted deeper pages are ranking for search terms where before only our homepage would rank. This is of course great however I am a little worried that some of the page titles of our internal pages are a little short, for example our main departments (we are an ecommerce store) are titles 'Department Name | Liberty Games' so for example 'Pool Tables | Liberty Games'. I have heard varying reports on what to do with the title tag, I have heard to keep the most relevant keywords to the left of the tag, which we have done, I have also heard that shorter is better. I am just a bit concerned that our tags are looking a little stumpy in the serps alongside other results which are longer (although admittedly a bit keyword stuffed). So (eventually) my question is, will short titles harm my click-through rate ? but are shorter titles better for SEO ? If longer is better are there any recommendations about what I could add to these titles that could potentially help click-throughs and natural rankings ? Many thanks, Stuart
Conversion Rate Optimization | | stukerr1