Website speed optimization is an important factor in search engine rankings. Google has been highly vocal about how site speed impacts SEO. Optimizing your website for speed is crucial, as this will help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and improve the user experience.
This article will provide a comprehensive overview of website speed optimization and its impact on SEO. We will also discuss various techniques you can employ to ensure that your website loads quickly.
Websites are becoming increasingly complex, making it difficult to optimize for speed. However, there are some simple things you can do to speed up your site and keep your visitors satisfied. The 12 strategies listed below will help you improve your website’s speed, user experience, mobile friendliness, accessibility, and search engine ranking.
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Why Is Page Loading Speed So Important?
Remember that “page speed” is different from “site speed.” The term “site speed” refers to your overall user experience on the website. Page speed, also called “page load time”, is the time it takes to show all of its content after being clicked on.
The longer the page loads, the more likely your user will leave your site, or what we call the bounce rate in SEO. A slow-loading page will provide a poor user experience, cause your page to lose rankings, and cause it to fail to convert.
Both are essential to the user experience, but some pages may load fast while others take ages. You must understand why some pages take longer to load and thus have higher bounce rates. Otherwise, your website’s conversion rate may suffer.
Like other search engines, Google ranks pages that provide a great user experience quickly. The speed of the SEO page is crucial and significantly impacts the user experience. Users will find it easier to navigate your website if your pages load quickly. A fast-loading web page lowers the website’s bounce rate, which benefits your SEO score.
Optimize your page because it is critical to the brand. If your website is fast, it will affect your ability to drive engagement and conversions.
12 Major Ways to Boost Your SEO with Website Speed Optimization
Use a CDN to Increase Speed
CDNs, or content delivery networks, can significantly improve the speed of a website. Users can cache content from multiple locations around the world using CDN servers. For example, if your site is only hosted on the origin server in South Carolina, users in China or Australia will have to wait a long time for the site’s content to load. This is because of the lengthy connection distance.
CDNs are not technically required for websites but significantly improve performance and loading times.
When a website is hosted on a single server, all user requests are directed to the same hardware. As a result, the time required to process each request rises—furthermore, load time increases when users are physically distant from the server. CDN redirects user requests to the nearest server. As a result, content is delivered to users more quickly, and websites operate more quickly. This is an expensive but very effective method of optimizing load time.
Move Your Website To a Better Host
There are three possible hosting types:
- shared hosting
- Virtual Private Servers (VPS) plan
- dedicated servers
Shared hosting is the most common type of hosting used globally. This is the most affordable way to get your website online quickly and cheaply. Selecting a fast web host is essential to ensure a higher level of optimization. With shared hosting, you share the server’s CPU, disc space, and RAM with other websites. That’s why shared hosting is slower than VPS or dedicated hosting.
Virtual Private Servers (VPS) and dedicated servers are significantly faster. For content distribution, VPS makes use of multiple servers. With a VPS, you share the server with other users while having your section of the virtual server where your configurations do not affect other clients. If your website has average traffic or an eCommerce site with traffic spikes at times, VPS will be the best solution for you.
A dedicated server, which can be your physical server, is the most expensive hosting option. In this case, you rent a server and hire a system administrator to maintain its operations.
Another option is to rent dedicated cloud resources from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google, or another public cloud provider. Both approaches can be combined to form a hybrid cloud.
Optimize The Image Size Of Your Website
Everyone appreciates visually appealing images. Images are critical components of successful eCommerce sites. Many photos, images, and graphics on your product pages increase engagement. The disadvantage of using images is that they are typically large files that slow down a website.
Compressing images with tools like ImageOptim, JPEGmini, or Kraken is the best way to reduce image size without reducing the quality. The procedure may take some time, but it is well worth it. Another method is to use the HTML responsive images secret> and size> attributes, which adjust image size based on user display properties.
Reduce The Number Of Plugins
Plugins are essential components of any website. They incorporate features suggested by third parties. Unfortunately, as more plugins are added, more resources are required to run them. As a result, the website runs slower, and security issues may arise.
The number of plugins grows as time passes, while some are no longer used. We recommend going through all the plugins you have installed and removing any that are no longer needed. First, run the performance tests on your page to determine which plugins are causing your website to slow down. Not only does the number of installed plugins affect website speed, but so does their quality.
Also Read: 10 Tips For Laravel Performance Optimization in 2023
Database Optimization in CMS
Database optimization is an efficient method for enhancing performance. If you use a content management system (CMS) with many complex plugins, the database size grows, and your website’s performance degrades. For example, the WordPress CMS stores comments, blog posts, and other data that require much storage space. Each CMS requires its optimization measures and has its plugins. For WordPress, consider WP-Optimize.
Lower The Number of JavaScript and CSS Files
If your website contains multiple JavaScript and CSS files, it will generate many HTTP requests when users access specific files. These requests are handled individually by the visitor’s browser, which slows down the website’s operation. If you reduce the number of JavaScript and CSS files, your website will unquestionably load faster.
Try to group all JavaScript files and all CSS files. This will reduce the number of HTTP requests made overall. There are numerous tools for quickly minifying HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. You can utilize tools such as WillPeavy, Script Minifier, and Grunt.
Use Website Caching
If a large number of users are accessing the page at the same time, servers will operate more slowly and require more time to deliver the web page to each user. Caching is storing the current version of your website on the server and displaying it until it is updated.
This means that the web page is only rendered occasionally for some users. A cached web page does not need to send database requests repeatedly.
The strategies for website caching depend on the platform on which your website is built. For WordPress, the following plugins are available: W3 Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. You can also configure caching under your general settings if you use a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server. Generally speaking, website caching is unavailable on shared servers.
Reduce Usage Of Web Fonts
Web fonts are now widely used in website design. Unfortunately, the utilization of web fonts harms page rendering speed. Web fonts add extra HTTP requests to external resources. The following steps will assist you in decreasing web font traffic:
Make use of modern formats. WOFF2 is a modern browser.
Only include character sets that are used on the site.
Select only the styles that are required.
Related Article: Top 10+ WordPress Plugins For Business Websites In 2023
Identify 404 Errors
A 404 error indicates that “Page not found.” This message is provided by the hosting to browsers and search engines when a page’s content is no longer available. You can use error detection tools and plugins to identify and fix 404 errors.
As previously stated, additional plugins can slow down your website, so we recommend running the resource through external tools for error detection. Examples include Xenu’s Link Sleuth, Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), and the 404 Redirected Plugin for WordPress.
Once you’ve identified all 404 errors, you must evaluate the traffic they generate. If these broken links aren’t getting any visitors and aren’t using any server resources, you can leave them as they are. If these pages continue to receive traffic, consider redirecting external links and updating internal link addresses.
Verify Your Third-Party Plugins and Scripts
If you’re stuck on why your web pages take so long to load, a third-party external service may need help communicating with your site’s server.
For instance, do your social media accounts, such as Facebook and Instagram, have plugins? Check these widgets for loading issues that could slow down your page’s performance. Perform the same for Google AdSense, BuySellAds, Amazon Associates, etc.-related elements.
To speed up your third-party plugin connections, consider loading your page’s scripts concurrently and selecting the ones that are most important to you. The simple fact is that the more third-party scripts you run, the more likely you will experience slow page load times.
Reduce Redirects
Redirects on a website generate additional HTTP requests, which hinder performance. We recommend keeping them to a minimum or eliminating them. First, you should conduct a site scan to identify all redirects on your page. Screaming Frog can efficiently identify redirects. Then, you must determine whether they serve a necessary function and retain only the essential ones.
Make Use of Prefetching Techniques
Prefetching involves reading and executing instructions before their being initiated by a user. The technique is fairly prevalent. For example, it works well if you can anticipate user actions and load content or links in advance. Modern browsers enable prefetching by default because they anticipate user behavior patterns.
However, UX specialists and engineers are more likely to comprehend user behavior and provide browsers with “hints” for prefetching work.
Conclusion: Boost Your SEO with Website Speed Optimization
If your web pages are loading slowly, this post has given you some tips and tricks to improve page speed which will help your SEO and CRO.
Therefore, we advise implementing a simple yet effective website speed optimization strategy:
Examine and evaluate the critical success factors of a website, including conversion, visibility, and usability.
Test the current speed of your website and prioritize the pages and features that require the most work concerning these three factors.
Start your optimization with the elements that slow down your website the most and prioritize the pages that impact your conversion rate.
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