How to Optimize Your Website Loading Speed for Improved SEO
How can you improve your website’s loading speed? How can this help improve your website’s SEO value?
Whether you’re a business that’s clamoring to make a name for itself or you’ve been around for several decades, you simply can’t ignore the power of having a website. Of course, if that website isn’t working as well as it should, you might find yourself fighting an uphill battle. Many business owners don’t understand the importance of website loading speed. The truth is that just having a website isn’t enough these days. It needs to perform to certain standards, especially those set by Google. Today, we’re going to take a look at how website loading speed relates to SEO and then provide you with some easy-to-follow tips to improve its performance.
How Website Loading Speed Relates to SEO
In the past, we’ve talked a lot about the importance of making Google happy with the use of search engine optimization. This typically refers to the use of keywords and key phrases that help you rank higher in Google search results. What we haven’t really touched on, however, is the fact that Google also ranks your website according to how quickly each page loads. Therefore, if you truly want to take advantage of SEO, you need to learn how to improve your website’s loading speed.
How to Improve Your Website Loading Speed
Improving your website’s loading speed will not only help you rank higher with Google, but it’ll also provide a more pleasant experience for your existing and potential customers. The good news is that it isn’t a difficult process. All you’ll need to do is make some pretty simple changes to your overall site or individual pages.
Here are some quick tactics to make this happen:
Sign Up for Premium Hosting
There are a ton of website hosting options out there. Many of these will advertise their “low, low” prices, which is why they’re so popular. The problem is that this is a perfect example of “you get what you pay for.”
If you sign up for mediocre hosting to save a buck or two, then you’re likely to get poor performance, i.e., lower website loading speeds. Premium hosting doesn’t really cost that much, but it can make a world of difference.
Compress and Optimize Images
It’s no secret that the internet is a visual medium. That makes your website a visual medium as well. This often leads to companies using large images on their website pages. The problem is that large images take longer to load.
Although the difference in speed may be negligible to you, it’s not to the website loading speed gods. This is why you should reduce your images’ file sizes, which will lower their “weight” and help your pages load more quickly.
Reduce the Number of Redirects
Whenever a page on your website redirects to somewhere else, it slows down the system. Yes, it’s true that some redirects are necessary. If you’re moving to a new domain, you really don’t have a choice. But if you can remove unnecessary redirects, you’ll be able to significantly decrease a page’s loading time.
Cache Your Web Pages
Caching has proven to be a very effective way to speed up the loading time of each web page. This basically involves storing copies of your website’s files, which reduces the amount of work needed for a server to generate your web page for a visitor’s browser. There are several ways to do this, but one of the easiest is to use a plugin such as W3 Total Cache, which is free through WordPress.
Enable Browser Caching
Caching doesn’t stop with web pages. It extends to browsers, too. Basically, what you’d be doing is allowing the browser to store several pieces of information, such as JavaScript files, style sheets, and images.
This means that it won’t be forced to reload the entire page each time a user visits it. If you’re looking for a good tool for this particular technique, WP Rocket, another WordPress offering, has proven very effective.
Choose Asynchronous Loading
Whether you realize it or not, your website includes CSS and JavaScript files, which can be loaded either synchronously or asynchronously. With files that load synchronously, your browser will stop loading other items on the page until that specific file has finished loading. On the flip side, asynchronous loading allows multiple files to load at once, which can speed up your web page’s loading.
Reduce HTTP Requests
Every single HTTP request can slow down your web page. This includes requests for CSS, JavaScript, and HTML code. Although it might not seem like a big deal, the removal of extraneous spaces, characters, and other unneeded elements will reduce the required loading time. It basically translates to the concept that “cleaner code and leaner web pages equal faster loading.”
Use a Content Distribution Network
If you’ve never heard of a Content Distribution Network (also known as a Content Delivery Network), then you’re probably new to this sort of thing. This refers to a network of servers that will host and deliver copies of your site’s content from servers around the planet. Although this network can appear to be separate from your primary host, it actually works with the host to maximize your site’s performance.
Eliminate Unnecessary Plugins
At some point, plugins became all the rage, and many companies never looked back. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unnecessary plugins on various websites, and that might include yours. It’s highly advisable that you look through your site’s plugins and decide which ones are still relevant and which ones haven’t been touched since the era of the Flintstones. Hint: Remove the latter.
Turn to a Digital Marketing Agency
If you truly want to improve your website loading speed so that you can rank higher on Google, then you should seek the help of a professional marketing agency. After all, a digital marketing agency works with these kinds of things on a regular basis. They know all the tips and tricks needed to reduce the loading speed of your web pages and will put them into effect immediately.
Contact P3 Agency Today to Improve Your Website Loading Speed and SEO Value
The P3 Agency excels in all areas of digital marketing and web design in Clearwater and the surrounding areas. If you have any questions about how to improve your website loading speed or would like us to provide you with a free marketing assessment of your business, give us a call at (727) 474-9064 today.