Undoubtedly, the more your website speed, the better for users and even search engines! It was in 2018 that Google updated its speed algorithm of the websites for many times so that those websites with better speed were visited much more and first ranks were awarded to them. Therefore, speeding up the website loading turned into a necessary issue that we are going to take a look at simple methods which have a high impact on it. Well, if you check the statistics of the websites providing ordinary content but on a high speed platform, you can understand the importance of the website loading speed better.
Content preview
- Why is it important to have a high speed website?
- Is there any impact on SEO by the speed?
- Tools to test the speed of the website
- How to speed up the website with simple methods?
- Conclusion
Why is it important to have a high speed website?
Research shows, if the process of loading your website takes more than 3 or 4 seconds, 40% of users will leave you! Fast right? I know…there is something even worse! If this number increases up to 10 seconds, the number of left users will reach 78%, especially in peak hours. Literally no good user will remain for you and instead, they will go to your competitors with higher speed, even if their content is not as valuable as yours.
A single second delay in website loading equals to:
- 7% less chats
- 11% less website displaying
- 16% less customer satisfaction
- Etc.
So, you should keep in mind that the speed of the website is such a necessary factor for Google in indexing top websites.
Is there any impact on SEO by the site speed?
Absolutely YES! One of the main factors that both Google (search engines) and users pay a lot attention to is the speed of loading. Google managers announced that: Nowadays, the number of websites providing what people search are so excessive that if you are a few seconds slower than your competitors, there would be a big loss of users!
But if you are looking to increase the loading speed of your website, there are many simple ways. Yet, before starting to implement the techniques, it is recommended to test your website speed.
Tools to test the speed of the website
Google console speed test
This is one of the features of Google console which automatically calculate and test the website speed and report it to the webmaster. The reports show you interesting results that can be helpful to figure out what pages perform weak and what perform great on different devices such as phones, tablets, pc, etc.
Google Lighthouse
You can add the extension of lighthouse on your Google Browser and receive real analyzes on what you even plan to upload!
GTmetrix
The result of the cooperation of Google and Yahoo is GTmetrix which tests your website speed simply but accurately. Besides, it offers you the weaknesses and powers on your website and recommends the solutions for each report.
Page speed insights
One of the other tools from Google evaluates your website pages from two aspects: 1- smartphones, 2- windows platform. The results would be a number between 0 to 100 plus recommendation to improve the website. If you get 85 or above, congrats! You are doing well with the website loading speed.
Pingdom
This free but powerful website test loading speed online sent to the webmaster which is practically simple.
So, if you tested the website speed and it was lower than your expectations, here is what you can do to help it.
How to speed up the website with simple methods?
Quality Hosting
Host is the heart of the website. If the hosting would be slow, the whole process of loading in all pages will be affected. Note that, the closer the host location is to your target audience, the better loading speed is achieved. Thus, make sure when you buy the hosting service, you are not wasting money on useless and low quality hosting.
Optimized pictures
The size of the pictures need to be compressed and optimized. You can simply reduce the size of the picture through online platforms such as Tinypng.com without reducing the quality of the picture. Make sure if you are working with PhotoShop, choose the “save for web” option to reduce the size of pictures.
Suitable theme and optimized length of the pages
Themes which are coded perfectly regarding high speed support are the best choices as they reduce the loading time. In addition, note that long pages take longer to load so if it is possible, divide one long page into two or more shorter pages.
Using CDN
Content delivery network or CDN the data of your website will be saved in different servers in the world so people based on their location will receive the website data through the closest server which impressively increases the website loading speed.
Compressing files
If your CSS, HTML, JavaScript, etc. files are larger than 150 bytes, it is better to compress them with some tools like Gzip.
Browser cache
Activate the browser cache of your users so that once they enter your website, the pictures, files and pages are saved to their cache then when they come back to visit your website again, the loading time will take much less as there is no need to re-download the data.
Update the plug-ins, use the speed booster plug-ins
If your website runs with WordPress, don’t forget to use the latest updates of plug-ins. Also install a speed booster plug-in to impressively increase the loading speed. Autoptimize is a good one.
Reduce the redirects
Sometimes when we open a page, it sends us to another page which is called redirect. Redirect will make the user wait longer as the loading time will be doubled.
Conclusion
Note that all the mentioned methods won’t have instant consequence and it needs a little time taking which is totally worth it. Just make sure every upload on the website obeys the mentioned rules so that the user satisfaction, ranking and ultimately success in your website will be fulfilled. We hope reading this article helps you to boost the website speed like a rocket.
SEO consulting is particularly important for businesses that are looking to expand their reach beyond their local market. International SEO consulting involves researching and analyzing the target market of different countries and optimizing websites accordingly. This requires an in-depth understanding of the culture and language of target audiences and how they interact with online content.
