Ideal page size and page load time

[anuvenkatesh]

Does google index images? Does page size and load time affect rankings? Whats the ideal page size & load time? My home page is abt 350k (including images) and load time is about 7.5 secs..Am i good or needs improvements?

[bradbox]

Google Webmaster tools will let you know if pages take too long to load.

If you think your load time is 7.5 secs, bear in mind this will fluctuate. Do you really want users waiting 10 seconds for it to load on a slower connection? SEO is one thing, but for real users this might turn some of them away.

You can always (dare I say this) build a lighter 'splash' or entry page, and your existing homepage after that.

[jimbeetle]

Hate to say it, anuvenkatesh, but I've it the back button long before 7.5 seconds.

I don't know what the prevailing wisdom on page size is these days, but I still aim to keep mine very lean, mostly in the 20K range, mostly text with some grapics when needed.

But then again, just color me old-fashioned ;-).

[bradbox]

20k is really tiny. 350k sounds too big.

Anuvenkatesh,

Have you moved all your styling into a CSS?
Have you optimised all your images?
Are you able to reduce the amount of data on the page via either pagination or a table with a filter?

[jimbeetle]

20k is really tiny

Yah, but a heck of a lot of text.

[anuvenkatesh]

Thank you everybody. Yes, we've moved all css to external css file, yes, we've optimized images. But we are a legal resources providing company & we have quite a lot to accommodate on our home page as our home page is the top landing page and people come looking for a variety of resources. If they don't find atleast a link to navigate to what they are looking for on HP, they are going to exit immediately.

[bradbox]

If your user experience is a 7.5 second wait for a large homepage, and the site gets some serious traffic, you should consider caching the site, either on the server, or via a Content Delivery Network such as Akamai (I don't work for them, and I'm not a reseller). That will speed the site up considerably.

The economics of the latter will depend on your traffic though.

[beu]

Originally Posted by bradbox

If your user experience is a 7.5 second wait for a large homepage...

That is for sure, I'd say any load time over 4 seconds is criminal.