Website Speed is important when it comes to search engine optimization.  Knowing how to speed up your website can help you rank higher in  search engine results as search engines rank sites that load faster higher than slower sites. Strive to have your page load in under 2 seconds.  If you think that’s impossible, consider Amazon.com loads in 1/2 second and Apple.com loads in under a second.  

Many things can contribute to the speed of your website, including your WordPress Plugins.

WordPress Plugins may be Slowing Down Your Website Speed Load Time and Making You Rank Low in Google and Other Search Engines.

We took the time to test popular plugins to see which ones are worth using and which ones should be reconsidered.

Studies show that users leave a site if it hasn’t loaded in a timely manner, especially on mobile devices – keep your users happy and engaged by providing a fast performing website especially for their mobile devices.  Keep in mind, mobile devices will load your website slower than someone connected to cable or faster.

I took one of my own WordPress website that has no content, comments, links, or media and has a generic out of the box theme and tested it with GTmetrix which analyzed the speed as the following before any plugins were activated on a test server.

• Page load time in 0.92s,
• Total page size is 26.7KB
• Number of requests is: 6
• Page Speed Grade  B 88%
• Yslow Grade: A 90%

One by one, I test different common WordPress plugins to see which plugins slow down a wordpress website and which increase the speed. I have highlighted the ones that were excellent in green font and the ones that failed miserably in red font – Please note this list will grow as I discover new plugins I want to test, so keep coming back to see my results. Also feel free to suggest other plugins I should test in the comments section below.

Akismet 2.5.3 by Automattic
Load time increased to 1.17s

All In One SEO Pack 1.6.13.8 by Michael Torbert
Load time increased  to .097s

Cbnet Ping Optimizer 2.3.2 by Chip Bennett
Load time remained the same

Cross-Linker 1.4.1 by Jan Hvizdak
Load time increased to 1.05s

Force GZip 1.0.1  by Justin Shreve
Load time increased to 1.94s
Page speed grade increased to 89% B
YSlow grade increased to 91% A

LinkedIn Share Button 1.3 by John Blackbourn & Frank Prendergas
Load time increased to 1.04s

Delete Duplicated Posts 2.0.5 by CleverPlugins.com
Load time increased to 1.10s

JS & CSS Script Optimizer 0.2.2  by Evgeniy Kotelnitskiy
Load time increased to 3.47s

Robot Meta 3.3.1 by Joost de Valk
Load time increased to 1.00s

SEO Ultimate 2.4  by SEO Design Solution
Load time Increased to 1.48s

Share and Follow 1.54.1 by Andy Killen
Load time increased to 1.17s
Total page size increased to 198KB
Total number or request increased to 10
Page speed grade decreased to 86% B
YSlow grade decreased to 85% B

Sharebar 1.2.1 by Monjurul Dolon
Load time increased to  1.10s
Total page size increased to106KB
Total number of requests increased to 9
Page grade decreased to 85% B
YSlow grade decreased to 83% B

Slick Social Share Buttons 2.1.4  by Lee Chestnutt
Load time increased to .93s
NOTE – It passes on speed only if you put it on the home page and posts.
If you add it to pages, archived pages, category pages it fails.

Sociable 4.1.5 by Blogplay
Load time increased to  1.37s
Total page size increased to 79.3KB
Total number of requests increased to 12
Page grade decreased to 88% B
YSlow grade decreased to 79% C

Related Posts Thumbnails 1.3.1 by Maria Shldybina
Load time increased to 1.02s

WordPress SEO 1.0.3 by Joost de Valk
Load time increased to 1.53s

W3 Total Cache 0.9.2.4 by  Frederick Townes
Load time increased to 1.03s
YSlow grade increased to 91% A
NOTE:  The WordPress site tested above had no content.  Due to this I due to this decided to take a large WordPress site and see if W3Total Cache performed better. Here are the results

• Page load time in 7.38s, after W3T Cache ran it load time decreased to 4.76s
• Total page size is 261KB, after W3T Cache ran page size increased to 262KB
• Number of requests is:34, after W3T Cache ran page requested increased to 36
• Page Speed Grade  C 78%, after W3T Cache ran Page Speed Grade increased to 79%
• Yslow Grade: C 75%, after W3T Cache ran Yslow Grade increased to 77%

Help keep plugins in check — add your tests and plugins in the comments section below.