Search engines like Google prioritise pages that load fast. Therefore, the position of a webpage’s ranking in search results can also reflect its loading speed. If your website’s loading speed is too slow, you are at risk of losing your visitor’s attention and undermining your potential reach of new visitors. To cover everything you need to know on optimising your website FOR® has written this blog.
It’s only one of many on-page SEO metrics but slow page loading times can affect how well a page ranks in SERPs and user experience (UX). Here’s what’s slowing down your pages and how to start speeding up.
Google’s neural network research says that as page loading time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, 32% of visitors abandon the site before it even finishes loading. The slower the page, the more likely the site visitor will leave in frustration.
Compress Images
When you want to speed up your page scores, start by compressing and optimizing images. Reducing the image file size reduces the page size and therefore the time it takes to load.
There are many tools you can use to compress your images, like TinyPNG or Attrock. If you’re on WordPress, several image optimization plugins are available, like Smush, EWWW Image Optimizer, and Imagify.
Using the right file type, resizing images and removing GIFs can all help reduce page weight.
Remove Unnecessary Plugins
If your WordPress site has more than a dozen plugins, consider which can be removed. Some plugins are more resource-hungry than others, so you may have to do some testing to figure out which ones are slowing down your page the most.
Review your site’s plugins, talk to other stakeholders and decide which are really necessary.
If a plugin is not providing value to your site or may provide value in the future but not now, disabling or removing it makes sense. Also think if you can replace multiple plugins with different functions with one plugin that does it all.
Clean Code
The page speed optimization process is a good opportunity to review your site’s code and clean up any unnecessary characters or lines. Every bit of unused or unnecessary code you remove will speed up your site although it may not be noticeable.
Be careful when working with code. Create a backup before making any changes and stay focused on the task to avoid mistakes.
Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript
HTML, CSS and JavaScript can have a big impact on how fast a page loads so minifying and cleaning them up can give pages a speed boost.
To minify code, remove unnecessary characters, counters, spaces, or other code elements. The result should be cleaner code, a smaller file size, and faster loading pages.
Minify CSS, JS, HTML
Once you’ve cleaned up your code, consider minifying it to save space. There are multiple CSS and JS compressors (and some minified and compressor combos) out there. Work with your web developer to figure out what’s best for your organization.
Bundle CSS & JS
In addition to minifying, bundling of stylesheets and JS files can reduce the number of server requests. Every server request slows down the page. For sites and pages with a lot of requests, this will really hurt performance.
Browser Caching
Caching helps browsers store information so that when a visitor returns to a page, the browser doesn’t have to reload the whole page again. It works by storing copies of your site’s files (like CSS stylesheets, images, and JS) on the user’s browser so they can be served up faster on subsequent visits.
Develop a caching policy that determines what can be cached, for how long, and by whom.
Remove Redirect Chains
Webpage redirects forward visitors to a different URL than the one they requested. This creates additional HTTP requests, which require extra processing time.
For most website owners, it’s not realistic to eliminate all redirects. However, to maintain the speed of your web pages, consider keeping only essential ones.
Use a CDN
Another way to speed up your page is by using a Content Delivery Network (CDN), also known as a Content Distribution Network.
A CDN distributes copies of your website’s static files to geographically dispersed servers around the world. This reduces the distance between potential visitors and the server and reduces latency and Time to First Byte.
Find a Faster Host
There’s only so much you can do to speed up your web page and the reality is the problem won’t always be on your end. Your web host plays a big role in your website’s performance. It’s possible your site’s slow speed is due to poor hosting performance rather than poorly optimized pages.
If you’ve done all you can to speed up your page and your pages still aren’t loading fast enough, it’s time to find a faster host. Look for a performance-focused host that offers dedicated hosting so you won’t have to share your hosting resources with other sites.
Final Thoughts
Remember, page speed is an ongoing process, and you won’t see results overnight. A fast load time has always been part of the user experience. Now that it’s part of Google’s ranking algorithm, page speed is critical for ranking and page views.
Run a site audit to find and fix the pages slowing you down. In some cases, you need to handle multiple areas of web development, such as bug prevention, performance optimization, and security. Using a QA automation tool can be a big help in those areas. Are you ready to optimize your website? You can contact Toni Hukkanen, the head of FOR®’s Digital Marketing Agency.
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