Textrim: The Fastest Free Blogger Theme with The Best Core Web Vitals

Choosing a fast-loading theme for your Blogger is one of the keys to success. Visitors will less likely to stay in a blog which loads slowly. Bad website performance will also cause your ranking to drop. One of the best and fastest SEO friendly Blogger theme which you can use for free is Textrim.

Textrim is designed by Igniel. She is one of the most talented Indonesian blogger in the world. I recommend this theme because it loads super fast even when you are using AdSense and Google Analytic. It has a lot of features even though it is completely free.

This theme is very fast because it doesn't show image thumbnail on your blog homepage. Do not underestimate Textrim even though the interface may look plain. It may be simple but this theme is actually designed with Search Engine Optimization in mind.

I have been using Textrim for some of my blogs for more than a year. I do not encounter much issue with this theme. Textrim is also AdSense friendly. I was able to qualify and got AdSense approval for my blogspot websites when I use this theme.

The automatic multi related posts is probably the only feature which I considered to be flawed. This feature lets you to automatically insert internal links within your article. However, the internal link placement is not perfect because it may break article formatting. Even then, you can easily disable the feature by deleting the following code:

<b:include cond='data:view.isPost and !data:view.isPreview' 
data='post' name='textrimMultiRelated'/>

Due to its lack of thumbnail on the homepage, Textrim may not be suitable for a blog which primarily serves images. Alternatively, for those of your who rely on visual contents, you can use Fiksioner. It is a free fast-loading theme which is also designed by Igniel. I also highly recommend this theme. Fiksioner supports image thumbnail on your homepage.

However, if you are using Blogger to share articles, Textrim may be perfect for you. The absence of  the image thumbnail on the homepage is not a big deal for such website. Most users will land directly to your relevant articles instead of your homepage anyway.

You can read about the full Textrim's features and download the theme directly from Igniel. I don't recommend you to download it from somewhere else because the theme may be compromised. Don't forget to read the theme documentation so that you can install all of its feature properly. You can leave a comment below if you need help to install or customize this theme.

The importance of using a fast-loading theme for your Blogger

Visitors prefer to stay in a blog which has great user experience. In fact, on May 2020, Google introduce a new ranking factor which is called Core Web Vitals.  Core web vitals measures your Blogger's speed, responsiveness and theme visual stability. A lot of free themes provide you with good looking blog interface. But the theme may not be good in term of its core web vitals performance.

Nowadays people prefer something that is simple and easy to use. If your blog load slowly, people will not wait. They will click away from your blog and find a faster alternative. Clean design will also help Google bot to crawl your blog without any problem. It means that your blog posts may get indexed faster.

You can see the performance of your blog's core web vitals from your Google Search Console. You will be able to find which urls load fast, poorly or need improvement. You can also check your posts speed score through Page Speed Insight.

As you can see from the image above, my homepage's page speed score is 96 if it is viewed from desktop. It is almost perfect despite the ads and the analytic. Meanwhile, if it's viewed from mobile, the score is between 53 to 70. The score indicate that it may need improvement. However it is actually outstanding score for mobile page speed insight considering that Textrim is a free theme which doesn't have Accelerated Mobile Page feature.

Using AdSense and Google Analytics tend to slow down your blog speed considerably, especially when it's viewed from phone. So far, Textrim is the only free Blogger theme which has speed score above 50 on mobile page and above 90 on desktop even when AdSense and Google Analytics are enabled.

You need to find a balance between monetization and user friendliness. Textrim is the most balanced theme which you can use without spending any money. You can use Textrim together with AdSense and Analytic without sacrificing too much of your blog's core web vitals.

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