If you have been researching improving your website’s success, you probably know a little bit about search engine optimization strategies. You may have been improving your website content, your social media presence, and your link-building activities, which are all great strategies for optimizing your site but what about your site’s page speed?
Is page speed essential for a website’s success? According to experts, you should optimize it as much as you work on your website’s SEO. After all, site visitors can become frustrated if they click on a link, and it takes ages for a page to appear.
Let’s understand how important page speed is for your website, how to measure page speed, and what you can do to improve your site’s current rate.
What Is Page Speed?
Page speed refers to how long it takes for a webpage to become visible and available. You should take note that page speed looks at a single page on your site, which means different pages have different speeds depending on their contents.
Why Should Page Speed Matter to You?
Here are the reasons why you shouldn’t ignore page speed optimization.
We humans are impatient creatures and don’t want to wait long before we reach what we need. On average, if the site doesn’t load within three seconds, visitors will exit the site and move on.
Since 2010, Google has included page speed in its ranking algorithm.
In 2018, Google announced that page speed is a factor for mobile search ranking.
According to Google, the probability of a visitor clicking out of the site increases by 123% as the loading time increases from one to ten seconds.
What Affects Page Loading Time and How to Measure It?
There are five main things that can affect the page loading time:
The speed and capacity of the device the user is using influence how fast a browser can process a page.
The web server’s power limits how many visit requests it can handle at the same time.
The internet connection speed can control how much data can travel to the user.
The HTML used on the page influences how hard your browser works to display the contents and retrieve images, fonts, and style sheets.
The time it takes the browser to execute the scripts on the page.
What Can You Do to Improve Your Site’s Page Speed?
Okay, so now that you are familiar with what can affect your site’s page speed, here are some tips on what you can do to improve it.
Optimize images by finding out the best format for the best quality without too much space.
Compress images before uploading so you can reduce the number of bytes you send out. You can use Optily to optimize images on your site.
Utilize a Content Delivery Network (CDN) with data centers worldwide, so your site’s files are always close to its users.
Avoid redirecting links. They force your browser to make another request which adds another set of seconds to process.
If you have a set of non-changing files, leverage the concept of browser caching, so there’s no need to download every time a person visits.
Conclusion
Getting your website on the top of the heap, above your competitors and in front of potential customers is a lot of work with no silver bullet. Whether it’s SEO or page speed performance, the culmination of all these strategies working together will lead to results that grow your business and make your website work for you. By leveraging these strategies, you’ll master how visitors enjoy your site experience, how your message gets across to them, and how Google ranks you. Develop the practice of regular diagnosis so you can spot problems right away and keep your site in good standing.
Do you need help with your website? Torch Digital Labs offers website design, development, and digital strategies. Contact us today, and let's get started on your project.
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