The tips will guide you on how to prevent the ad units from page load delays for a better user experience. After all, when it comes to ranking a website or a blog, page load time is one of the most important factors. The faster your website loads the more page views and more the revenue from your blog or website. When a site loads faster, it becomes easier to navigate, thereby improving the user experience. Most websites and blogs earn through display ads from Google AdSense so by default they have multiple ad units on each page. Initially it may sound monetarily beneficial but over a period, it may reduce the number of visits due to slow site loading. Ad units increase the page load time if they are large. Larger and complex the ad unit, longer the page load time. So how do you enhance the load speed without compromising on the user experience and number of ad units?
Use Asynchronous Ad Codes
When you create AdSense ad units, you have the option to generate tags for asynchronous ads. This eliminates ad-related page load delays. With asynchronous ad code, the browser does not wait for the AdSense code to execute before it processes the rest of the page. It simply means that the ads load separately from the rest of the page. Therefore, even if you have a large and complex ad, it will not prevent other sections of the page from loading.
Control the File Size
Smaller file size (of various files like images, CSS, JS etc.) can speed up the page load on your website or blog if you ensure that it does not exceed 60KB. The smaller the file size, the faster it loads. It is good to limit the number of images on a page and optimize it. You can use an efficient image editor to resize or to optimize the image. Alternatively, you can also opt for a plug-in that would automatically resize the images.
Know your Ad Networks
As bloggers, most of us tend to use multiple ad networks to maximize our earning potential. However, each ad network functions differently. Many are reputable and keep their ad servers optimized, and require advertisers to comply with a strict set of guidelines. Then there are the other ad networks that are only interested in generating revenue. They have no guidelines whatsoever, due to which the site experiences page load delays. For example, with Google AdSense, one rarely encounters speed issues from Google’s server, but the same may not hold true for other ad networks.
Limit the Ad Units
In attempt to generate maximum revenue, we not only end up using multiple ad networks but also too many ads on a single page. Sometimes we forget that the number of ads is actually affecting the page load speed and thereby preventing visits by the users. It is advisable to analyze the ads on your page. Do you really need all of them? If you are sure that a particular ad is hampering the page load speed, just remove it to improve the user experience. Alternatively, try to edit the ad image to resolve the issue.
Tools to Find which Ad Unit is Slowing Down Your Website
There are a number of free tools available to test the ad impact on your website. These tools are easy to use and provide enough data to identify the reasons for slow loading pages:
GTMetrix
With GTMetrix, you can enable an ad blocker in your testing so you can see the true comparison of how your site performs with ads enabled and with ads disabled. Unfortunately, this specific feature is available only in the paid version.
WebPageTest
This tool is the standard for web performance geeks and is an incredibly powerful tool. It provides diagnostic results, Page speed optimization checks and more. Besides the ad networks, there are numerous factors that contribute to performance bottlenecks and slow page speeds. It could be bloated themes, plug-ins etc, but most of the times it is the ads that contribute to slow page load times. To maximize the ad revenue, and generate the most impressions without compromising on the user experience, it is important to keep the ads units in check. It is advisable that you check your website on a regular basis. It will help you identify the slow ad networks and fix them. Regular checkups will ensure that ads continue to be your main source of revenue without diminishing the user experience. Should you have any question on this topic, please feel free to ask in the comments section. Our reader community and we at TechWelkin will try to assist you. Thank you for using TechWelkin!
