Revolution Slider SEO Optimization
I’m afraid the Revolution Slider SEO optimization is poor to say the least, the plugin developer should have coded the plugin to create thumbnails and load the smaller image instead, NOT load the FULL size image (no matter how big they are) and scale down to fit! That is not what responsive SEO means!
Scaling images this way is anti-SEO, what it means is a Revolution Slider Plugin user who doesn’t understand basic performance SEO and basic image optimization can upload a huge 5,000px wide, 10MB image and the Slider plugin will use that full size image as is (that is stupid!)!
The image below for example is a small 550px by 275px wide version of a much larger image, the full size version is 1,800px by 900px wide.
Revolution Slider Images Are NOT Responsive
WordPress and the SEO theme used on this site is truly responsive.
1st WordPress allows the user to select a smaller version of the full size image (I chose 550px wide).
2nd if a WordPress theme (or plugin) is setup correctly when a user visits on a small screen device (mobile phone for example), WordPress and the correctly setup theme/plugin will load an image that’s similar in width to the devices screen size even when the image selected by the webmaster is larger: like I selected a 550px image.
So though the full size image above is 1,800px wide and I set WordPress to show the 550px wide version, if you are on a mobile phone with a screen width of 300px, the image you see above isn’t a scaled down version of the 550px image (or the full image scaled down), but another image with width close to 300px wide.
This is how responsive SEO themes and plugins work, this is NOT how the supposedly Responsive Revolution Slider Plugin works!
Remember the plugin is called the “Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Slider Plugin” (RESPONSIVE indicating mobile responsiveness) and is advertised as optimized for performance.
Optimized Performance
Good looks aren’t everything, so we made sure that
Slider Revolution also loads lightning fast!
- Loaded core file size automatically scales with used features
- Intelligent Lazy Loading options
- SEO Optimization
- Monitor and optimize all aspects of your sliders
- Advanced Debugging Options
As long as users can upload huge images which are scaled down rather than resized (thumbnails created) by Revolution Slider this is NOT an optimized for performance SEO WordPress plugin. Add to that it’s heavy use of jQuery (a very bloated JavaScript framework) and this cannot be described as an SEO optimized slider plugin: it actually damages performance SEO quite badly!
I wouldn’t use this slider plugin if it were free.
Continue Reading Optimized Images Load Faster and Consume Less Cellular Data : Lighthouse Report
With many front end page builders like Divi, Elementor they also demand the same as Slider Revolution in respect to image optimizing, With SR I can get 98 scores on Gmetrics any day with 1-2 second page loads. The backend of SR also has awesome tools to optimize your images, fonts and tells you what you can do to optimize further. SEO also comes down to “what you know” and how you overlay any website with good SEO framework no matter what you use to build the content.
I can load SR with the same content as using Elementor or other page builder tools just as fast or faster and if you use SR with a theme like Astra well you will load your site lightning fast with or without “Bloated JS”
Why do I know this? I use this amazing product on many websites!
Which part of what I said isn’t true?
For example I wrote:
“I’m afraid the Revolution Slider SEO optimization is poor to say the least, the plugin developer should have coded the plugin to create thumbnails and load the smaller image instead, NOT load the FULL size image (no matter how big they are) and scale down to fit! That is not what responsive SEO means!”
Am I wrong to argue the Revolution Slider plugin doesn’t automatically create small thumbnail and this means users are uploading HUGE images where small thumbnails should be used?
Revolution Slider doesn’t even use the closest matching image size available, that should have been an SEO no-brainer to check if there’s an available image (WordPress creates multiple image sizes by default) close to the size required!
This is an SEO failing in the Revolution Slider plugin, WordPress has the ability to create thumbnails and there’s ways to hook into that core WordPress feature so plugins can generate smaller thumbnails of larger images.
Slider Revolution is NOT an SEO friendly slider plugin, it’s only SEO feature is lazy loading images, that’s it!
It’s good that they added lazy load to Revolution Slider, but it doesn’t take away from the fact HUGE images are being used where small thumbnails are appropriate. Had the Revolution Slider plugin developers added the ability to generate smaller thumbnails it would at least mean users aren’t uploading multiple MB images where 50KB images should be used. Scaling images is lazy plugin development and lazy loading huge images does not make a slider plugin SEO friendly.
You said you know how to use the Slider Revolution plugin to create fast loading websites. I see on your website you use the Slider Revolution plugin, but your website is quite slow on mobile devices, even on GTMetrix it’s slow to load.
My SEO Gold Homepage
GTMetrix : loads in 0.7 seconds, 153KB, 15 requests
Your Homepage
GTMetrix : loads in 4.4 seconds, 1.17MB, 24 requests
You said your web designs load in under 2 seconds?
It’s worse on Google’s Lighthouse mobile test:
My SEO Gold Homepage: Mobile Performance SEO – 99/100 https://googlechrome.github.io/lighthouse/viewer/?psiurl=https%3A%2F%2Fseo-gold.com%2F&strategy=mobile&category=performance&category=accessibility&category=best-practices&category=seo&category=pwa&utm_source=lh-chrome-ext
LightHouse : Speed Index 3 seconds, Time to Interactive 1.9 seconds, Max Potential First Input Delay 90 ms
Your Homepage: Performance SEO 37/100
LightHouse : Speed Index 11.1 seconds, Time to Interactive 8 seconds, Max Potential First Input Delay 1,010 ms
Performance SEO is one of my areas of SEO expertise, you are a web designer, you don’t understand technical SEO like I do. If a business wants a nice looking flashy website they hire a web designer like you, if they want a fast loading website which Google will rank high they hire me: I’m not a web designer, my designs are basic because once you add in pointless flashy features like sliders the web design requires jQuery and it starts to go bloated.
David
Ok for a start “my” website you are referring to isn’t even live, it is just a staging site at best and hasn’t been optimized. Basically just a play ground (on cheap shared hosting). If a web designer or lets say a “home builder” is uploading “Huge” images in the first place then I guess they don’t know much about SEO in the first place. Many themes, page builders including Slider Revolution do not automatically scale images to the correct sizes for any containers you might place them in but as also like Slider Revolution they provide documentation on correct image sizing and basic optimization.
You are not wrong in saying this about images but it is two generic as unless you know what you are doing with image optimization etc then any site you build with whatever theme, plugin etc you are going to have the same issues. In the back-end of SR you can choose the image size in “source type” which no mater what size image you have loaded, lets you chose the closest match from the mentioned “WordPress” default sizing that is preformed when importing the images. So automatically it assumes you would like to use your default image, but gives the option to also choose a WordPress scaled image if you wish. (I guess this is an option just in case you don’t know how to scale your images)
I personally optimize my images utilizing webp and most if not all of my images are less than 100kb generally between 5-40kb. Also to help you optimize even further when you go to save your slide or content a button pops up so you can click and see exactly how big your actual slide content is and to top it off gives you further suggestions “in real time to optimize further. I use this feature heaps mainly to check I haven’t doubled up on font weights that I don’t need.
As stated before YOU CAN choose to utilize the WordPress generated images sizes if you wish with a click of a button! Further more no mater how you build your website unless you know how to correctly optimize all content including images you are in for slow loading speeds. Fonts are another issue that people get wrong, using two many different fonts etc that can significant impact your load speeds, thankfully SR shows you all of this information while you build your content allowing you to correct this in “real time”.
As you have kindly pointed out the website you refer to is not live and is actually just a bunch of jargon that I use to much around with I use the email address to for that site to capture
junk emails and the such. Further more I do use the “content” design features of SR but very rarely actually use SR as an actual “slider” as not with the site you are referring to which is full of bloated sliders and content I use for learning. To top it off it is also running on a shared hosting that although is good to host “staging sites” on wouldn’t be my first choice for a live production site. So the timings are pretty dam good for raw content!
It also has absolutely no SEO content whatsoever so 37/100 is surprising at the best!Further more I do understand a lot about SEO but you are right I am no expert! My background is in IT Technical for 30+ years which helps me to accelerate my learning when it comes to technical information like SEO and optimization. It also gives me an advantage on learning SR when it comes to the technical attributes of the software/plugin.
SR should have changed their name to to Revolution Designer (or something) when they updated to version 6 as it is far more than “slider” plugin it is a powerhouse of UX if used correctly and within context. I agree “sliders” are pretty much dead (although google uses them extensively!) Just go to their “images tab” and hay presto! sliders galore! so used in the right context who knows?. Further more I do not create “flashy websites” well unless it is requested :o). But there is no way in the world I would create a website without making use it was optimized and with the correct SEO infrastructure including ongoing monitoring, analytical, and often split testing(depending on the clients needs).
You are so so wrong about SR, I guess as with many others that complain “it is to difficult or technical” (that’s why they prefer Smart Slider (which by the way is great if used correctly), this is exactly also why others “love” the product..simple because if you put the time in you start realizing its true value…just like SEO. If you are wanting to use the product for just sliders then you have no idea of its actual potential!
SEO is changing rapidly and evolving with the new generations so ya better update your skills asap! Old school SEO is pretty much dead in the water.
The Revolution Slider SEO Optimization article is a snippet of a larger article Optimized Images Load Faster and Consume Less Cellular Data which looks at a website created by a Children’s Picture Book author who is NOT an SEO expert or advanced user and her Performance/speed reports are terrible!
Check her live Google LightHouse Tool test results below, it usually comes out at 0/100 on Performance in part because she uses the Revolution Slider plugin and she doesn’t have the technical skills to minimise the SEO damage.
Takes around 12 seconds just downloading render blocking resources (JS and CSS files) because of bloated theme and plugin features like the Revolution Slider plugin and a lack of SEO caching an minification features.
Even with an SEO damaging plugin like Revolution Slider IF it’s been used by an SEO expert or someone who has advanced technical skills it can generate OK SEO results (OK, not amazing) since an expert will understand about optimising image sizes etc… outside of the plugin.
The problem is plugins like Revolution Slider are NOT only being used by SEO experts and advanced users, they are used by webmasters like the children’s picture book author who understand nothing about SEO, pagespeed or even basic issues like resizing images BEFORE uploading them.
My SEO Gold site in comparison tends to be around 99/100 and on a good day 100/100 on all LightHouse tests.
I just moved the SEO Gold site to a new cheap Godaddy VPS server with 4GB ram which cost me $863.57 including tax for 3 years, so just under $24 a month. The Godaddy VPS currently hosts just under 50 domains, so is costing me 50 cents a month in hosting per domain. Getting good speed results has a LOT to do with server optimisation and I’ve already optimised the server for speed. If I used plugins like Revolution Slider it’s highly unlikely I’d hit anywhere near 100/100 on Performance (speed) and I’d be impressed to see a site hit 95/100 on Performance that uses Revolution Slider.
You said you can build sites with the Astra Theme and the Revolution Slider plugin and have good speed results, feel free to link to a few of them and we can test their speed in Google LightHouse.
I’ve tested the Astra theme and it was fast BEFORE adding bloated features.
It’s very easy to argue you know how to use the Revolution Slider plugin and your website designs are fast, but I just ran your portfolio websites through LightHouse and the results were dire!
The machine services website: 44/100 Performance
The classic cars website: 5/100 Performance
The automotive services website: 34/100 Performance
The wedding website: 12/100 Performance
The wine bar website: 30/100 Performance
Note: I haven’t linked to the sites because I got them via your email address, wouldn’t be right for me to say who you are etc…
Assuming you built those websites they are slow flashy websites. I see sites like these everyday, they look nice and have flashy features, but they are SLOW and SLOW websites cost sales. PageSpeed/Performance is the new SEO and I’m at the top when it comes to performance SEO, you will not find faster.
David Law
Hi David,
You are absolutely correct about these portfolio sites, remember though that the website that refers to this portfolio isn’t actually a live site. The above mentioned sites all of which I have been asked to “redo” have not actually been built by me (other than the “wine bar”), which currently is on shitty cheap hosting with close to zip! caching, it needs moved very soon and then Ill finish optimizing it :o). The car website is a nightmare to be honest! But I am working with the owner on a staging site to completely re-optimize including the several hundred images with no alt text and a file size on average of 2-8 meg each! oh dear! The mechanical and servicing sites same thing (new sites in “staging” The mechanical site is also pug ugly!
I have however changed my mind in relation to your blog on this subject. I think SR is a great product used contextually..but NOT for general use on a website for displaying content,sliders and the such (best to stick to the “less is more rule” for this I think).
I was just disappointed that your blog on this subject was to broad and unfair on SR as a valuable asset for creating pretty amazing digital content which can be utilized as part of any designers tool kit. But must admit your are also correct concerning general website usage and the fact that actual “sliders” are pretty much useless and bloated content that “just looks bling”.
For example: The plugin/software is like less than 30 bucks and can be used to create pretty amazing content for the likes of business display assets, as part of a website build for the likes of a real-estate,cafe,fashion, photography, and many many other industries, businesses.
Now I am not talking about actually having this content on the “main website” but rather as an asset within the domain. A client/ business owner can then pull this content up on to multiple display monitors etc all from the one location (including different content on different displays and change it with a click of a button or two :o).
Sure it can be indexed for SEO on the domain (maybe), but not necessarily viewable from their main website. For 30 bucks you can utilize this amazing product to display not only static content but also (if you have the cash to fork out on a professional display touch screen) you can make this content interactive. Further more you can set dates and times for this content to be activated/ displayed!
Typically this would run into thousands of dollars for the same “online” applications and costly ongoing subscriptions. In the boarder terms of SEO and considering the advantages of expanding your product /services visibility (which by the way is all part of the big picture) utilizing a 30 dollar product called Slider Revolution I just couldn’t let you away with “bagging” this product without pointing out other invaluable reasons to have this product as part of your extended toolkit.
From an online SEO point of view I guess this isn’t relevant in this context, but in the broader sense of SEO being only one part of the bigger picture (a very important part I agree).
I am also at a loss to understand how you can compare what is basically a “Blog” website to real world business sites when it comes to your own websites “speed” in particular considering it is mainly a bunch of text with a few webp images chucked in (most likely less than a few kb each) opposed to a main stream business website, that has further requirements requiring richer content, optimization, great SEO, fast hosting, maybe (most likely) CDN and DNS optimised services, and so on…now we are only talking about “speed” here.(which we all know is up there in importance!)
The below is my main website: (gmetrics from Sydney, google chrome)(Desktop)
A (98%)
A (93%)
1.9s
677KB
18
Compared to your website:
A (100%) +2%
A (96%) +3%
4.2s +2.3s
109KB -568KB
15 -3
now I have a page size of 677kb and your page is 109kb so oranges to apples it is comparable, but I am running on average shared hosting! My site isn’t a “blog” either has no SEO at the moment but includes richer content as we cant all compare to a 90% textual “blog” site..so basically what this points out is that although my optimization is pretty good, at some stage I need to look at VPS hosting or the such. My fully loaded time was 1.9 opposed to 4.2 but that depends on a lot of things so Ill say its nul.
Please if you are going to “bag” out a product make sure you also say…”however” and what might be advantages of spending as little as 30 bucks for lifetime usage! Its like sort of saying well I don’t like LG tvs because they take .2 seconds longer to turn on…but unlike my Samsung that is almost instant! the LG has many more useful features that I enjoy using. :o)
Regarding GTmetrix speed testing you have to take into account hosting location when comparing 2 websites targeting different countries.
My SEO Gold site which mostly targets the UK market is hosted on a cheap Godaddy VPS server with a European IP address so should be tested from a UK IP (the GTmetrix London, UK test server) if we are going to compare it to an Australian website hosted in Australia from an Australian IP (the GTmetrix Sydney, Australia test server).
GTmetrix speed ratings for https://seo-gold.com/ from various locations.
GTmetrix Test Server Region: London, UK – Fully Loaded Time 445ms
GTmetrix Test Server Region: Dallas, USA – Fully Loaded Time 1.9s
GTmetrix Test Server Region: Mumbai, India – Fully Loaded Time 1.9s
GTmetrix Test Server Region: Hong Kong, China – Fully Loaded Time 2.2s
GTmetrix Test Server Region: Vancouver, Canada – Fully Loaded Time 2.3s
GTmetrix Test Server Region: São Paulo, Brazil – Fully Loaded Time 2.7s
GTmetrix Test Server Region: Sydney, Australia – Fully Loaded Time 4.0s
This will give a fair representation of how fast a website is for it’s target audience. For my SEO Gold site the worst results will be from Australia since it’s on the other side of the world.
An Australian web designer targeting mostly Australian businesses should be tested from Australia and a UK SEO services business targeting mostly UK businesses should be tested from the UK.
Assuming your Australian website is hosted in Australia your sites local speed of 1.9s is much slower than my UK website which is hosted in Europe (the Netherlands) which loads in under half a second in London.
I rented the current Godaddy VPS server on April 19th, 2020 (4 days ago) and haven’t fully speed optimised it yet: I basically moved 50 domains (virtual servers) from a 3 year old Godaddy VPS server running Centos 6 to the new Godaddy VPS running Centos 7 copying over a bunch of custom server rules to the httpd.conf file.
I haven’t started optimising MySQL yet, so it should get a little faster when fully optimised.
Take into account the GTmetrix tests are NOT testing under real world conditions, these are best case scenarios on a Desktop PC with a good broadband connection. It’s why I use the Google LightHouse pagespeed tests for determining site speed for mobile users on a slow connection. You can use GTmetrix with slower connections, for the SEO Gold site I still get good pagespeed on a 3G mobile network, but it really slows down on 2G.
GTmetrix Test Server Region: London, UK – 3G Mobile (1.6 Mbps/768 Kbps, 200ms) Fully Loaded Time 1.7s
GTmetrix Test Server Region: London, UK – 2G Mobile (240/200 Kbps, 400ms) Fully Loaded Time 11.0s
I have spent years building a WordPress SEO theme which is fully SEO’d and avoids adding bloated features which slow a website down, if I can’t recreate a feature without the bloat I don’t use it. I also test all WordPress plugins I use for speed issues, if it slows a site down and I can’t manage the issue I won’t use the plugin.
If you want a super fast website even on a 3G mobile network you can’t have flashy features.
In the UK most mobile networks are at 4G, but there are still areas in Scotland for example on 2G, looks similar in Australia, so UK and Australian business should assume their customers are on 3G mobile phones when connecting to their websites and test accordingly.
David Law
Yes thank you for pointing the GTmetrics out, I understand and it was a pretty basic comparison to say the least! I don’t think you can compare your website speeds in relation business websites that require much more rich content than a blog site? I just don’t get this? It is reasonable to assume that given the content on your site it would be amazingly fast. This also goes for the original blog about SR in the context that no one would even think of using it on a blog site in the first place?
It is just not a fair comparison when it comes to oranges and apples (so to speak :o) Maybe in the context of comparing a feature rich site/plugin and a blog you might assume you wouldn’t compare these in speed rankings with a text based blog site? Could you imagine how boring the www would be if all websites where basically text with the odd webp flat boring images that no one could be bothered reading because they where just plain ugly and boring to interact with?
Although your actual site is very informative and to be honest pretty interesting, but honestly even though your site loads lightning fast on a mobile, would you honestly think most of your viewers would sit there on their mobiles and read all your textual content? For me your site would definitely be a read on a bigger screen.
How about considering when “bagging out” very useful products like SR (if used correctly (and it is not just a slider!) you compare them with real world websites the actual product would get used on? Lets say a photography site or a Fashion site, or the such not a feature rich plugin vers a text based website, considering even at best one small animated piece of content even when optimized would most likely load slower than a page of text!
Oh yea Australia is pretty crap when it comes to internet speeds so we are all used to 1-3-4-5 second load times on sites that have content that is! SR is a very useful extremely feature rich “tool” that can be used for many different digital project aimed at promoting businesses. If you where going to use it on your website as your header/hero or actual sliders that no one gives a poop about or the such I would strongly suggest not to! But it can also be utilized in other ways to promote your digital foot print and branding.
It is top notch software and well worth 30 bucks! Used it recently for a theater company, created an animated Production Poster for them that they will display on their digital panel in the theater foyer, all they have to do is pull it up from their website and the digital panel does the rest!
All because I avoid using flashy JS features via plugins like Slider Revolution to maximise pagespeed does not mean I don’t know how to use flashy Javascript features whilst minimising the performance SEO damage caused by using jQuery etc…
I’m a performance SEO perfectionist on this website because I can be a perfectionist, but can’t be 100% perfect on all websites so have no choice but to take speed hits for features.
You can even see on this sites About Page where jQuery is active for the contact form. The About page is the ONLY webpage on this site which needs jQuery.
The About page still scores high on performance SEO scores in Google LightHouse, see for yourself with the live LightHouse test below:
On a good day it still scores 100/100 for Performance SEO even though it’s running jQuery.
If you can build a website which uses jQuery which scores at least 95/100 on Performance under the LightHouse mobile test settings (that’s the hardest speed setting), LMK and I’ll be impressed with your Slider Revolution design skills without compromising too much on speed.
I’d struggle to achieve above 95/100 Performance results with Revolution Slider because plugins like Revolution slider are VERY BLOATED. I’m not happy with the extra css and js files on my about page and will one day find the time to reduce it to a minimum.
I bet you can’t even find a website (built by anyone, not just you) which runs the Slider Revolution plugin with a performance score of 95/100.
If I had to I could take any website you’ve built and improve it’s pagespeed considerably without removing a single flashy feature, but I’m not an SEO miracle worker, I can’t fix bloated code.
David Law
Yes I think you could speed up any website I had built of for that matter most peoples sites. I don’t confess to being a guru when it comes to backend optimization. I do however optimize any content to the best of my abilities. They say it takes the human brain approx 3 seconds to react, I would say online its more like 2 seconds, so I relate this to the real world and try my best to keep any content within the 2sec rule. I would also be amazed to find anyone using to much “Flashy” content being able to load at 95% on a mobile.
So yes we have to be vigilant when it comes to TTFB and the such. In the real world many small businesses find the cost of a pure high end website restrictive, this doesn’t mean compromising speed, SEO or quality…its just as you know the ongoing costs for experts such as yourself to maintain a website can be restrictive to many businesses (small businesses).
As you know you can check thousands of website every day that are dismal (to say the least!) with both SEO and load speeds, if fact I find it harder to find good ones!
I admit Slider revolution and other such products should be carefully considered (or not) for use on any website, and especially NOT used for loading above the fold! The fact remains that using this product correctly and in the right context isn’t such a bad thing, yes pure quality coding with limited bloat is obviously the bast way to go. Another way of employing this product (taking into account you know how to optimize images and scripts etc) is to create content for the desktop that then swaps out to similar content when viewing from mobile or tablet this way you can have rich content when clients are viewing on a desktop (which is typically attached to faster connections).
This is quite easy to achieve and can provide a balance between having a little more “flashy” content to satisfy faster devices and just as good quality on a mobile but without the “Flash” factor. (just need to make sure the info you are swapping has the same relevance in the same location :o)
Slider Revolution as I have also stated before has MANY more uses other than bloating out a website, and you should consider these when compromising a company’s brand product, I would never “bag” out a product for a singular comparison especially in relation to TXT and the odd webp image vers Slider Revolution. The fact remains this product has many many uses that can save a business a lot of money when it comes to content creation related to promoting their business in the real world. Its like using Adobe products to optimize, manipulate images and design content for your SEO efforts and website quality. The same goes for SR as an animation tool that does more than XX-hundreds of dollars for a similar product.
30 bucks well spent..and its for lifetime updates! Use it wisely, use it carefully, use it for creating digital content for promoting your business because isn’t that what this is all about? (just maybe not use it to especially load useless bloated slider that never get seen!)(I guess this is unfortunately the company’s major money spinner so that is how it is promoted, that’s the only shame for the company as it has sooooo many more uses! :o)
Business branding and quality both online and off line is way more than a site that loads 100/100, if I build a website with content that is I would home to achieve in the 90s for desktop and hopefully sit around 75-80+ on mobile (if lower than this I will consider swapping out content to further optimize the mobile performance. This relates to approx 400-500ms TTFB with a fully loaded at around 700-1sec for desktop on quality local shared hosting with caching optimized (WP Rocket with there image optimization is an option :o). on Mobile approx TTFB of 1sec or less with fully loaded/interactive about 2-3sec (swapped out content a little less. (yes using slider revolution optimized! content for a little desktop “flashy’s”
I can think faster than that and most people cant, so for me it is a comfortable speed compromise for actually having quality content at an affordable price. Texted based blog/website with a few webp images and good caching well 100%/100% all the way! all ya need is a light weight theme or plan old html, half decent shared hosting and great caching that’s about it really :o) However! if you want a Real World Small Business or any other for that matter website with quality rich content you will always have to compromise (a little) well until we go to 6-8G for mobiles! :0) just like 90% of the rest of us!
Interesting Desktop comparison Below: ALL sites are running the same amount of content:(sure they all could be vastly improved) for the sake of argument its just a basic comparison.
This first site you might be surprised is mainly Slider Revolution with rich (fully optimized, well best ya can:o) with feature rich content!
It has the smallest data size but loads slower as well (some compromise for richer content)
A (99%)
A (92%)
1.4s
572KB
20
This site same amount of content but simplified (same optimization and caching)
Loads faster with a reduction of less than .5 of a second. and has a larger data size.
A (98%) -1%
A (91%) -1%
0.9s -474ms
688KB +116KB
23 +3
This site I don’t about their practices but it is a competing site, same amount of information, nice but minimalist (which is good by the way)
It has by far the largest data size but same amount of information? with very little different styles and well optimized (generally) images.
The point is Slider Revolution with far more rich content compromises .5 second on load times from the second site, but beats the minimalist site by 1 second! and has far more rich content for visitors (which isn’t always a good thing :o)
The other factor is mobile speeds well although the first and second site average 4-5 seconds (which is still not great) but you can easily swap out optimized content when viewing on mobile etc> This last site is around 12-18 seconds with from what I can see very minimal styling, and well optimized images of which it only has a few.
This makes me believe their optimization, hosting and caching seriously needs work!
B (87%) -12%
C (76%) -16%
2.1s +0.7s
1.47MB +932KB
30 +10
Point being YOU really need to know or educate yourself with SEO Gold and other sources on the enormous benefits of getting all these crucial things right when it comes to competing in the online world, if you are going to have “bling” make sure you know how to use it effectively and why you want it, and more importantly HOW to OPTIMIZE the content!
I am using Avada and slider Revolution. Getting a C without Slider and D with it. Wondering if there is an alternative recommended slider. Thanks for the discussion.