One SEO tip I can tell you is that the need for speed is real and one way to increase your blogs performance when loading a post or a page is by lazy loading the images. As blog owners, we all strive to get “A’s” in every single category when running our blog through grmetrix.com as a measuring tool. We are always playing around with the codes in our theme files making adjustments to better our blogs overall but then forget about the user’s experience. I can tell you that choosing the right Web Host can help the stat above a log but not solve all known issues. Let’s tackle images and how loading them fast can help increase your blog’s performance.
See that score above? I want to let you know that my good score above might not always be that way or even that number if you go check it right now. There are simple changes that you could make to get your score a little more closer to all “A’s” or all “B’s” while still providing an excellent user experience on your blog. I talk about a lot of ways on this blog.
Love the blazing speed of WPOutcast? Want to use all the plugins we use? Do take a look at our page listing all the WordPress Plugins That Are Powering WP Outcast. These plugins are subject to change at any time. Check the plugin page once a month.
2 Ways To Optimize Speed
This blog use’s CloudFlare.com (free version) in addition to the blog being hosted in the cloud which is on a VPS that I some control over important server settings. I’m not saying for you to move to cloud hosting or even a VPS server with any web host to have an incredible page speed score. It was a personal decision why I moved to the cloud. One thing to always remember is that plugins is the #1 reason why your blog will have lag time or make it look strange in different browsers among other problems. Please remove plugins that you could do without or that have not been updated for at least 1 year which could be a huge security risk in using a very outdated version of a plugin.
- Recommended Security Software: Sucuri Security – for high traffic blogs
In addition to the changes post above and below, I also made a few more tweaks. In fact, I am always tweaking code on this blog so things change constantly. Let’s get to the Lazy Load Plugins that are easy to set up and of course free.
The Needle In The HayStack
UPDATE 9/11/2016: We switched to a paid plugin called Comet Cache that is a state of the art plugin.
Earlier in June of 2016, I installed the a3 Lazy Load plugin. It has helped out this blog a little for sure but didn’t solve all page speed issues. I forgot to run the blog through gtmetrix before I set up this plugin to compare what has changed but I did notice the speed was better than before. If you do install this plugin which I highly recommend it, listed below are the exact settings that I would use.
A quote from the plugin page:
Speed up your site and enhance frontend user’s visual experience in PC’s, Tablets and mobile with a3 Lazy Load.
Below is a guide on this one plugin and I will also share 2 more plugins that are worth a shot at that also lazy load images.
Lazy Load Plugin Settings
Basic user settings

Load image settings
Note, loading images as the user scrolls down helps the blogs loading speed and gives the user a better experience. In addition to this feature, it is strongly recommended that you optimize your images for best performance using the Short Pixel plugin.

Settings for Videos
I don’t post videos on the blog but here the settings I enabled just incase I publish videos.

Remaining Settings

The reason why I did not select anything for “WordPress Mobile Template Plugins” is because all The StudioPress Sites themes are already mobile responsive right out of the box and even the 3rd party themes. After saving your settings, go ahead and clear your blog cache and possibly your internet cache and then go to your blog and see if you notice any changes when a page loads. You should see some improvement to your blog. There is still more work on your end that you can do. For example, remove plugins that are just useless and not doing anything good to benefit your visitors.
A lot of ads on a page that run off scripts can tend to cause the pagespeed to be bad. Proper optimizing of your blog even with ads such as Google AdSense wouldn’t be the cause of your blog slowing down. Speed is ever so important in SEO and for the visitors who find you blog, user experience is very very important. Your images should be loading as the page loads when setting up this plugin correctly.
Speed Plugin
The WP Speed Grades Lite does as it says, helps increase the blog speed but doesn’t always fix all GTMetrix errors. The key thing I took out of this plugin was speed increased.
For the free version, here are the settings. (If I upgrade I’ll write a review)
WPParse Lazy Load
An alternative and lite plugin called WPPARSE Lazy Load is another option to lazy load the images. Just 2 options at this time for the plugin with a potential more features in the future. This plugin was recently released and has room to be improved. I like it because it’s lite weight and gets the job done.
Consider Reading These Next:
- Schedule Blog Posts: Direct Free Time Towards Other Blogging Needs
- Optimizing Comments And Guest Posts For Your Blog
Rocket Lazy Load
This plugin is fairly simple to set up with very few options. I love plugins like this because you don’t need to be a rocket scientists to configure it.
Here are is what this Rocket Lazy Load plugin can do.
- works on thumbnails, all images in a post content or in a widget text, avatars and smilies.
- No JavaScript library such as jQuery is used and the script weight is less than 6kb
This is why this plugin is perfect to install because it doesn’t hurt your pagespeed but helps a bit. If you post a lot of people’s we sometimes do, lazing loading the images helps in the blog post or page loading a little faster. These days, the need for speed is important and every small detail counts. Take this plugin out for a test spin, it’s free with no strings attached.
Did you notice any difference? If you didn’t, get in touch with me and I’ll help speed up your blog for affordable fee.
If you have found this tutorial helpful, please consider sharing it online with your followers.
In one word, Thank you.
Your welcome. :)
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