It is an annoying experience waiting a long time for something you are excited to discover. Most people will switch to something else. It happens the same with your website. Slow site speed can harm your user experience and search ranking. Here you will find some methods to check how quickly your page loads and learn how to improve page speed in 11 simple techniques.
What Is Page Speed?
Page speed refers to the amount of time it takes for the content on your page to load.
Many factors can influence page speed. It includes the amount and type of content, the distance the data must travel, the kind of connection, the device, the operating system, and the browser.
You may think that page speed is similar to a vehicle’s speed. Actually, it is more beneficial to consider page speed as a user experience component your customers will have when they reach your website.
Why Is Website Speed Optimization Important?
Website speed optimization is a crucial step when applying SEO audit service since it can significantly affect the following website’s characteristics:
Visibility
Website speed has long been one of the important Google ranking factors. A poorly functioning website provides a bad user experience and receives less promotion in search results. Since December 2017, Google has also begun ranking sites based on their mobile versions, even for desktop searches. This choice protects users from web pages with poor performance and inconsistent device responsiveness.
Conversion
A Deloitte study indicated that just a 0.1-second increase in page loading time could increase conversion rates by 8%.
Conversion here means getting your website visitors to take the desired action, which is crucial to your company’s success. They might, for instance, purchase your goods, sign up for newsletters, attend webinars, or obtain guides. All of those actions can bring significant value to your business.
Usability
Website usability includes page speed, loading times, and responsiveness to customer queries. When you optimize page speed, it means that you can significantly improve your website usability and increase customer loyalty.
The faster website you have, the happier your users will be. A successful user experience can help you develop a significant customer base and a robust business.
11 Ways To Improve Page Loading Speed
There are numerous ways to speed up page loading. Here we can suggest the top 11 ways as follows:
1. Change the host
The hosting provider has a significant impact on your website’s speed. Choosing cheap hosting can lead to your page’s poor speed. It could entail sharing server resources among several websites, which would put a burden on how quickly pages load.
We recommend you choose a performance-oriented host with a strong base for speed. This hosting provider typically doesn’t offer shared hosting, so you won’t ever have to fear other websites taking away your available resources.
2. Utilize a content delivery network (CDN)
Another effective way to improve your page loading speed is by reducing the distance that information must travel from your server to the final user. Utilizing CDNs is a simple method to achieve that.
CDN is a geographically dispersed collection of servers. Together, they accelerate the delivery of your web content. A CDN is a fantastic way to speed up your website, regardless of whether it utilizes HTML, JavaScript, stylesheets, images, or videos.
3. Use Gzip for file compression
Gzip is a type of server-side data compression that aids in speeding up website loading. In other words, it reduces data collection, allowing for a more streamlined, effective delivery to a user’s computer.
Gzip can compress your HTML, stylesheets, and JS files. However, it does not work with images or videos.
4. Reduce the number of HTTP requests
Reducing the amount of HTTP requests a page makes is an incredibly effective way to speed up page load times.
When someone accesses an online page, their browser pings the web server to request the files that comprise the page’s content. The browser then displays the information on the page after receiving the requested files from the server.
The browser sends every file that makes up the page’s content as a specific HTTP request. The more files on the page, the more HTTP requests are made, and as a result, the longer it takes for your web page to open.
5. Minify CSS and JavaScript
The minification of JavaScript and CSS files is another practical way to speed up page load times. This process will help you eliminate all extraneous characters, remarks, and spaces in code and uses a shorter variable and function names. As a result, your page loading will be faster and easier with fewer data you have in your code.
6. Optimize images
Using images is an excellent way to improve page content and appearance. However, too large images can also cause a slowdown in loading times.
Therefore, optimizing and compressing your images is one of the simplest methods to speed up page loading. You might reduce image sizes, modify their file formats, enable lazy loading, or apply picture compression to do this.
7. Clean up the media library
Your media library most likely became overloaded with outdated or unused pictures over time. This issue slows down your page. To reduce the time it takes for pages to open on average, organize your media library by removing unused images and other media files.
8. Clean up your database and duplicate content
Similarly, your database can also bloat unused data like photos, files, and other media types over time. Besides, there will be much duplicate content you don’t notice due to some technical implementation.
You will need to clean up all useless, erroneous data and duplicate content from your database. This process makes retrieving information requests easier for your web hosting provider and helps search engines index the right content easily.
9. Create cache for your web pages
Browser caching is one of the best methods to load your website pages faster. It minimizes the required work for the server to generate and deliver a web page to a visitor’s browser by storing copies of your site’s files.
Caching your web pages can assist with TTFB (Time to First Byte) reduction by requiring the server to utilize fewer resources to load a page.
You can cache your web pages by asking your host provider to do it or use a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache from WordPress, which is free and easy to use.
10. Use Expires Headers
Expires headers help speed up the page load time for repeat visits to your website. They instruct whether the browser should extract a file from its cache or ask the server for it.
To speed up website loading, this lowers the number of HTTP queries and the number of downloads from the server.
11. Avoid redirects
The number of redirects on your website can seriously slow down your page loading speeds. The HTTP request and response cycle is lengthened every time a website redirects to another location.
Redirects are occasionally required when switching to a new site. However, removing pointless redirects from your website can considerably reduce page load time.
How To Evaluate Page Speed?
Evaluating page speed is an important step in website auditing. You can use the following tools to test and measure your page speed.
Free tool
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google Pagespeed Insights is one of the free tools from Google that you can try first. This tool makes it simple to gauge and test your page loading times on desktop and mobile platforms. More importantly, as a Google-supported tool, it can also assist you in ensuring that you’re meeting the speed standards necessary for top search result rankings.
PageSpeed Insights will evaluate your site content and assign a page speed score between 0 and 100. Besides, it will give you some suggestions to improve your page speed.
Paid tools
You also can try some paid tools as follow:
Pingdom Website Speed Test
Pingdom is an in-depth website load speed testing tool. It allows you to examine seven distinct states of a browser’s file request by measuring the time a page loads from seven servers spread across the globe.
Webpage Test
Webpage test is a tool developed by GitHub. It is available online and offline to download and run on your instance.
You can use this tool to check page speed in numerous locations all over the globe. Additionally, you can perform page-to-page evaluations.
GTMetrix
GTmetrix measures your page speed loading using YSlow and Google PageSpeed Insights. It can conduct testing in Vancouver and Canada using Chrome.
Its most impressive ability is comparing a page’s performance with earlier tests of the same page.
Another useful way to test your page speed is by applying an SEO audit service. They will help you check all website SEO criteria, including page speed.
FAQs
Does page speed affect conversions?
Page speed has a direct impact on the conversion rate of your website. The quicker the page loads, the higher the conversion rate. Keep in mind that the SEO page speed is around 3 seconds or less.
According to Unbounce, almost 70% of customers stated that page speed affects their willingness to purchase online. In addition, Portent found that every 1-second delay in page loading speed can lead to an average 0.3 percent reduction in conversion rate.
Are slow page loading speeds a website killer?
A slow page loading can kill conversion rate and negatively affect your website’s search engine rankings. A report by Business Wire showed that 73% of customers would move to a competitor if a website took too long to open. The page’s slow speed can kill your website and even your business.
Is your website’s page load speed hindering your company’s growth?
A slow website loading speed can hinder your company’s growth if you run an online business. It can affect your company’s growth in several ways:
- Decreasing website traffic results in declining sales and profits.
- Significantly lower the page’s SEO ranking
- Poor customer experience reduces engagement.
- Lower conversion rates and an increase in bounce rates among users.
- Increase the chance of website failure or Google blacklisting.
Conclusion
Generally speaking, learning how to improve page speed is relatively easy. So don’t hesitate to examine your website and work on making it faster. Understand the correlation between canonical tags and page speed, as proper implementation of canonical tags can also help improve website performance and load times. Remember that the longer it takes for your website pages to load, the more likely visitors will leave, and the higher the chance your business will fail.
Co-Founder & General Manager @ ROI Digitally
