In the present scenario, the speed with which your website loads has become an important factor for the ranking of your website on the search engines. Even Google is pretty cautious about it and is taking every measure to ensure that the web experience of the users is faster. This is the reason that Google has made it a ranking factor which can definitely affect the rank of your website. Google is focusing on having a mobile-friendly site as the trends are changing and more people are using their Smartphones to access the internet.
Though there are lots of aspects which need to be considered to boost the performance of your website but site speed is surely a crucial one. It not only affects the traffic but can move the interest of the users if the website doesn’t load quickly. As per the recent research, it has been found that if your website takes 1 second longer to load it is sure that the visitors will switch to the competitor’s website. You will not only lose your customer but the conversion will reduce by 7% and traffic by 11%. Thus the importance of a faster web experience cannot be denied as it can impact the number of people coming to your website.
If you wish to be successful online it is necessary that your website loads faster. You cannot ignore the slow site as it can bring down the traffic to a large extent. With the SEO trends changing at a rapid pace you need to work on the speed of the site and make sure all the content loads in just a blink of your eye.
Today I will be talking about what is site speed, how it is essential for your SEO and how it can impact the overall performance of your business. But before going deep into the topic, we will understand what actual site speed is.
Site Speed
Most of the people are confused between the page speed and the site speed. Page speed is the speed with which your page will load while the speed of the site is one with which all the contents will get loaded. There is a big difference between the two but site speed is more important in concern with search engine optimization.
Now there are a lot of factors which can bring down the speed of the website, therefore you need to make sure that all the parameters are looked into. If you work on the aspects you will surely be able to make the most out of the tools and see the website speed improving by leaps and bounds.
But before that, you need to know the various factors which require your attention so that you can work on them and improve the speed of your site.
How to Improve Website Loading Speed?
Some of the important aspects that you should look into to boost the speed of your website are:-
Tips#01 Choosing the Right Hosting Solution
The very first factor to consider is the selection of the hosting solution. The right service provider can help you enhance the speed of your website and offer other additional benefits too. Now the main task is choosing the hosting solution. Here are some of the tips that you can follow for the same.
- The hosting solution will be opted based on the amount of web space required. Now this will depend on the size of your website and the number of pages you wish to add in future. Thus you should keep all this in mind and accordingly decide the amount of web space needed.
- Bandwidth is yet another factor to consider or else the amount of traffic will be restricted and your website will not get enough traffic. Go for unlimited bandwidth for superior results.
- Reliability should be your next concern. For this, you can get feedback from people or you can try it on your own to see whether their services are trustworthy or not.
- The hosting provider should be able to provide 24×7 technical support so that you can get their complete assistance whenever required.
- It should have a control panel through which you will be able to manage your web account in a proper way. Changes can be made easily along with other additions that you would like to make.
Tips#02 Cacheable Redirect
Nowadays every website has its mobile version which redirects the users to the same. By using the cacheable redirect you can make sure that the loading time of the pages is improved and that the user experience is excellent. 302 redirect is a one-stop solution to all your problems. With Vary User Agent you can easily integrate a private cache control feature that enables the mobile users to get redirected without any problem. So by making a little change, you can easily get more traffic towards your website.
Tips#03 Keep Your Redirects as Low as Possible
This is something that can make a huge difference. Many times it happens that the browser is directed to another new URL for various purposes, in that case, you require an additional HTTP request. In order to have minimum HTTP requests, it is necessary to have the requests which are actually needed while redirecting the others. To achieve the purpose you can do the following.
- If there are any extra domains then make sure it is the least or else a lot of space will be used.
- Redirection should be directed to the desired page which is a better approach to redirection.
- If your existing page is already redirecting to another URL then do not have any kind of reference URL as it is merely a waste for you and will not give any benefit.
Tips#04 Minimize the Code
Optimizing your code is yet another way through which you can easily increase the speed of your website. For this, you can remove all the HTML comments, white spaces and other useless elements which are just occupying space. This will help in bringing down the page size and improving the speed of your website as well.
Apart from doing it on your own, you can even take the help of different tools which can help you in an even better way. If you are using a WordPress website then there are numerous SEO optimisation tools which can be used to achieve the purpose.
Tips#05 Image Optimisation
It is usually seen that the size of the images is too large which can definitely have a negative impact on the speed of the website. It is better to compress the images so that even if the users are accessing your website on a slow connection they are able to view the content. JPEG format is the most suitable of all. For WordPress websites, you have a plugin which can help you with this concern.
Tips#06 Have Your CSS First Followed by JS at the Bottom
Another way to improve the speed of your website is by placing the CSS Code right at the top. This is because CSS code runs first and if you keep it at the bottom, the whole code has to be read before it reaches the CSS thus affecting the loading time of your site. So it would be great if you modify the code a little and keep it like this. Also, such a coding style is considered to be standard and should be followed in a similar way.
Tips#07 Use Image Dimensions
Image dimensions are equally important just like its size. Therefore specifying the dimensions of the image can definitely prove useful in the faster loading of the website. To accomplish the purpose, make use of the “img” element along with “width” and “height” specifications. This will set the dimensions and you will be able to see a varied change in the loading time of your website.
Tips#08 Use CDN
CDN, also called a Content Delivery Network through the content can be distributed across various channels in a superior manner to the users. For this, the server is opted depending on the kind of content which needs to be delivered. Usually server which offers quick response time is preferred as it is much more beneficial and influences the speed of your website by leaps and bounds.
Tips#09 Use Fewer Plugins on Your Site
Using too many plugins on the site can definitely bring down the speed so it is better to have less and only the required plugins. Also using many of them can result in more errors and problems which may bring down the efficiency and performance of your website. So the best option is to take a review of the website and check which plugins are useful while deleting the others which just are an addition to the website and nothing more than that.
Tips#10 Enable Browser Caching
Whenever any user comes to your website, the various elements get stored and occupy a lot of space but by enabling browser caching this difficulty can be put to end. You can make sure the elements are stored temporally so that when again the same visitor comes to the website no request is made to the HTTP server.
A very simple example of the same can be like this. The user A tried visiting your website. As soon as the request is made your javascript, CSS codes, HTML pages, images etc get loaded thus opening the website before you. This would take a couple of seconds. All these elements are stored in the cache so if A visits the site again it will take less time to load thus improving their experience.
Tips#11 Update Your Scripts on a Regular Basis
The next thing that you can do is update the scripts on a regular basis. Keep a check on the same for any new release that can make your scripts better and optimised. The new updates are better than the previous ones and it is worth integrating them. By making these little changes you have a significant impact on the speed of your site thus making a difference to your traffic.
Now a question arises about how often you should make the updates. Once in every month can be a decent number to check and update your code. Updating can lead to a number of benefits like integrating new features and attributes, making your website secure and definitely improving the speed of the site. All this is really good for any business purpose and that is why you should not compromise with the same.
Final Words
So these are some of the aspects you can keep in mind to ensure a fast-working website that seeks the attention of your users. There is no denial to the fact that the user experience is crucial and with site speed being one of the ranking factors you cannot let it go. Thus it is a good idea to work on your website and make all kinds of possible changes or modifications which can lead to better working of the website and keeping the users engaged.
Hope with the above changes you are able to get a new website which not only ranks well on the search engines but is able to make a difference to the visibility too. For more information or queries you can write to me or suggest feedback to this post.
