Today, more than ever, the speed at which things get done matters a lot to the consumer. It makes the difference between a successful brand and that which is not, more so on the online space. The speed at which a website takes to open can be the difference between appearing on position #1 of Google’s SERP, and being on the second or third pages.
Since page speed matters that much, is there a way to get your website to load faster than it is? If you are wary about the amount of time your site takes to open, these five techniques should help you resolve that.
Optimize images
If you are keen on your rank tracking tool, you will notice that visualization contributes a lot in attracting traffic to your web pages. Since visualization is a critical issue in matters of SEO, you cannot do without images. However, the more images you use on your website, the slower your web pages will load. Technically, you can still use images and have a fast loading website.
To optimize them, ensure you minimize the sizes of the images you upload. Since quality is still of the essence, be careful not to mess up the pixels of the images or make them too small. The most important bit is to ensure that you are uploading images that are the same sizes as they will be displayed on your site. For example, an image of 1200 x 1200 pixels displaying at 120 x 120 will need to load more than ten times the usual load time.
While at it, keep your images in the right formats, that is, PNG for graphics and JPEG for photographs.
Enable compression
It is not just your images that can be problematic when it comes to sizes and the amount of time it takes to open them. With files like CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files, along with the images, you need the means to compress them into sizable data that does not compromise the speed of your website. Luckily, there is a software that can help with that, for example, Gzip for files, and Photoshop for your images.
Use a Simple Website Design
Did you know that the design of your site can impact the speed? Well, it does. A complex website has a lot of features that require time to load and serve functionality. If your website is a busy one, it might take even longer to respond to the thousands of queries being requested by customers.
Instead, opt for simple website design, with few widgets and sidebars. Reduce as much as possible, the number of elements on your website, including, JavaScript, CSS and image files. Remember that a simplistic website also adds value to the user experience, as compared to the complex counterparts.
Enable caching
Browser caching is an SEO secret that can considerably help boost the load time of your web pages. Ideally, browser caching is for the benefit of all the return visitors. Once someone has visited your website for the first time, they already have some elements of your website, like stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and more, on their hard drive in a cache or temporary storage. Without browser caching, it means that every time they visit your site, they have to reload all those elements. Instead, browser caching lets the visitors’ browsers to load your web page without needing to send all those HTTP requests afresh to the server.
Reduce redirects
Redirects can be beneficial, but they also have a disadvantage to them. Every time a visitor has to be redirected to another page, it means that the visitor faces additional time waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. Technically, this could mean a few more seconds, added to the initial ones of opening your website. With such, you are inviting a lot of bounce rates on your platform. Instead, cut down on the unnecessary redirects, and this will look great on your page speed analytics.
Take your time to audit your website for any issues that might be slowing down your load time, for the sake of user experience and high Google rankings.
