Your business website is going to need a lot of help if you hope to reach the right audience, and there is no one best way to do it. Instead, you need a range of pieces fitting together for your website to work well. One of the pieces of the puzzle is Website Speed Optimization, and without it, you’re going to fall behind the competition. The best thing that you can do is learn all about it and make sure that you are using it for your website.
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What is website speed optimization?
Website speed is all about how fast your website content on your website loads, and Website Speed Optimization is the process of increasing and decreasing loading time for your web pages. It’s a subtle but necessary addition to your site and it’s going to factor in both your Google ranking and your conversion rates. When you run an online service, a slow speed can both slow you down and ensure that your customer loses interest in you pretty fast! You have to optimize your website for page speed loading to be able to create one of the best user experiences around.
Why is website speed important?
First impressions really matter when it comes to your website. You only have a few seconds to appeal to your customers and visitors, and it can help to have a website with the right speed to do that. If your pages are too slow, people switch off! Website developers and testers work hard to make sure your website looks good, is functional and if the content isn’t adequately optimized, it’s just not going to run properly.
Your website page speed is going to be instrumental to anyone who visits the website. People – literally almost 50% of all people – won’t wait longer than a few seconds for a page to load. Convenience matters and speed is a part of the user experience. A high speed can ensure an impressive user experience, and people want that fast experience. Everyone considers a speedy website to be more reliable and professional than any other option for your business. You need to turn that negative impression around and that isn’t always easy! Speed can also affect your SEO rankings, and this can move you off the front page, which then leads to your conversions being affected.
Google actually penalizes any websites that don’t have a decent page load speed, and people will no longer go back to your site if the page takes too long to render. This ends up with a loss of revenue.
How does page speed affect SEO?
Page speed affects SEO and is a direct ranking factor. It’s also something that will affect your rankings indirectly, too, by increasing the reducing dwell time and bounce rates. The user comes first with Google and page loading speed becomes a direct ranking factor for mobile searches and it has since 2018.
How to speed up page load time?
There are plenty of ways that you can speed up your page load time, and we’ve got a range of solutions below:
Activating your browser cache
Using browser caching will help you to speed up that web page loading time. It’s going to help to load pages faster on a range of visits. It allows your site to temporarily store data and information, and you need it for it to work!
Minimize your resources
When you have too many requests for CSS files and HTTP requests, this can negatively affect your site speed. It’s so important that you minimize these resources so that you can improve the page speed and reduce any lag times.
Don’t forget image compression
There are larger image files that can negatively affect your site speed, too. When you enable Gzip compression, you can reduce the time it takes to download your JavaScript and HTML files. Compressing the images will help to reduce lag time.
Optimize media
Images and videos that are too big can negatively affect the speed of your site. This is especially the case for mobile users, and you can avoid this by ensuring your media is correctly optimized.
Best website speed test tools
There are some great tools that you can use for Website Speed Optimization. These include:
- PageSpeed Insights
This is a free, easy to use diagnostic tool that can offer suggestions. It’s a developer tool and it’s one of the best ways that you can get the information that you need to help and improve your website speed. All you have to do is enter your URL in the provided box and you then get a report on key areas to look out for.
- GTmetrix
With a user-friendly interface, strong free tier and comprehensive suggestions, GTmetrix offers an excellent website speed checker that’s very easy to use. You get a set of information on your speed test based on the Canadian server. There is a long list of potential issues provided and these are ranked by perceived importance, and it can also tell you how well you’re doing!