**EDIT: This is an older post. Hubspot has made updates to it’s COS that make some of this info outdated.
I do a lot of optimization work for companies on the hubspot cos. There are a few areas that can be improved and some that cant.
The truth of the matter is that the majority of hubspot partners are really good at sell and marketing, and really bad at development. Because of this they rely heavily on the template builder as apposed to building their sites using HubL.
The template builder adds tons of extra wrappers and span tags to the html.
Also they use hubspots default css and build on top of it. Check how many css files are loading on your site. frame work css is always bulky because it is coded for many different scenerios. Ideally you would want 1 css file containing only code pertinent to your site and as few imports (google fonts and etc) as possible.
Hubspot includes js in the head of your page for form processing and such. If you build a web page with HubL, the {{ standard_header_includes }} that is required in the document adds these and more (check docs: HubL variables - HubSpot docs). You could technically move these to the footer, but I am not consulting you to do so because I haven’t check the repercussions. Things like this are what give you the “above the fold error” on google page speed test and gtmetix.
Images. Almost 80% of what I do when optimizing websites for my clients on any cms/cos is optimizing images. First, make sure that the images you are using are resized in photoshop for no more than their largest usage.
second, make sure you are slicing your jpegs as progressive. they load better.
lastly, all images (png, jpeg, gif, etc.) need to be optimized. I use compressor.io to optimize images. 95% of the time that is enough for google with images, and if googles happy then your optimizing correctly.
ensure that your url doesn’t have landing page redirects. This is a popular one with hubspot. google page speed test and gtmetrix will tell you if you do, and if you do will tell what they are.
caching isn’t really an option with hubspot other than what they provide. Luckily they supply a cdn, unfortunately it doesn’t deliver css and js unless you create a .css or .js file and place it in the file manager. that will be a pain. Content delivery networks spread your resource requests to other servers taking the load of your hosting server. multiple things can be loaded in at once.
Hopefully that will help. You would be surprised at how many high tier partner agencies (and I have worked for a lot of them) do not optimize their websites.
on the other side of this it is important to remember that the core focus of hubspot is content marketing, not seo. SEO is ALWAYS important and you should optimize as best as possible. A high load time is intolerable to a lot of users. But your using your content to attract visitors via social media and etc, not so much through search so you don’t have to bow to the google gods as much as completely SEO driven strategies.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.
