Whenever my browsing speed goes down my blood pressure rises. I am sure this happens to everyone. If this were the case shouldn’t you ensure that your blog or website download speed is fast if not blazing quick? Perhaps this is the reason Google search algo calculates download speed of your web page uses it as a factor to ranking your site. Which factors contribute to browsing speed and how can ensure faster downloads?

Do you know where your server is located?

Download speed depends on several factors. One of them is the location of your server. Usually we prefer to host our blog or website on a server which is cheap. In this process we never bother to find out where our server is located. If your server is somewhere in the US, your customers or shall I say visitors to your website who are from US will be able to get faster download speed. But if most of your clientele is from Europe, you would be better off if your server were located in that continent. Nearer your visitor to the server, better the browsing experience. You must therefore make sure that your server is located at the right place.

How is your server connected to outside world?

The data communication line would determine download speed. Some servers are directly connected to the main communication highway, while others have a smaller or narrow communication line. It’s like driving on the highway or a narrow lane in the neighborhood. You would be able to drive much faster on a wider road. It’s the same for data communication. Probably you would have to pay more to be hosted on such a server but it’s worth the money.

How many other websites and blogs are hosted on your server?

This is another factor which you must consider while calculating download speed. If you are running a small blog I am sure it’s hosted on a server which has many other websites. This is perhaps inevitable and unavoidable. However you must make sure that there are not more than 500 websites on a server on which your blog is hosted. Sometimes a single website can soak up the entire bandwidth of a server leaving very little for others. Your blog can get coked in such a situation. This situation must be monitored and you must report this to the server administrator so that the bandwidth hogging website can be removed from your specific server.

Bandwidth at the visitors end

If the visitor to your blog is connected to a slow speed network, it’s obvious that he would face problems. In such circumstances you can do nothing. There are some websites which are optimized for different download speed. I am sure you as a blogger with limited resources can afford such technology. I suppose you would have to live with the problem of user-side download speed.

Conclusion

Remember that visitors to your blog are as likely to flip and go hopping mad as you would. It’s therefore your duty to ensure that visitors have a good experience and fast speed while browsing your blog.

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Sarah lamb is an avid blogger and likes to dwell on the nuances of writing for blogs. In addition to writing she   is presently promoting fuel cards for businesses an effective way to save fuel.