When Google made page load speed an important ranking criterion for websites, it became a hot topic in the SEO community to discuss and execute. Whether we’re talking about SEO or user experience, page speed is always a hot topic among webmasters and web hosting businesses.
In order to understand the concept of page speed, let take a look at a few aspects.
SEO Benefits
Page speed is a critical measure in Google’s ranking algorithm. Therefore it can have an impact on a website’s search engine ranks. Despite the fact that the evidence available to support this theory yields mixed findings, webmasters believe that website load time is only a small ranking influence. However, no verified study from Google has yet been offered to support this claim.
User Experience
Page speed has a greater impact on user experience than on Google search rankings. Several studies have been conducted in this area. Slow load times, they find, lead to user abandonment and lower conversion rates. A little increase in conversion rate could result in a tiny financial gain for websites.
What Are the Three Ways by Which Website Page Load Speed Can be Improved?
Here you will get to know some of the ways by which website page load speed can be enhanced.
Optimization of Videos and Images
Images and video, which take up a considerable amount of a page’s overall size, are some of THE most common causes of increased page load time. And when it comes to photos and video, there are two unique aspects to consider. These are the size of each individual asset and the total quantity of assets loaded on any given page. It’s critical to take care of both of these issues.
All media assets’ file sizes should be reduced.
Size your photographs correctly- Often, users make the mistake of uploading full-sized, 12-megapixel images without first shrinking them. If your image is 6000 pixels wide and will be displayed at 500 pixels, don’t upload it. While retina considerations (2x) are important, make sure the photographs are sized according to the design parameters.
When possible, use JPG instead of PNG- JPG is a compressed picture format that keeps the image’s integrity while saving space. As a result, JPG is favoured for the great majority of applications. PNG should only be used when transparency is required. TIFF and BMP should be avoided at all costs.
All photos should be compressed- Even photos that have been suitably scaled will be larger files than they need to be. Make sure that all of your images are compressed, as the compression can drastically reduce file size without affecting image quality. You can use a “save for web” option to export from Photoshop (or another image application) at a basic level.
Compress all video- Video, particularly high-definition video, has the potential to eat up a lot of bandwidth. Use a video compression program such as Handbrake to compress each video.
Use a third-party video hosting platform to embed- It’s also a good idea to integrate video from a third-party video hosting provider like Vimeo or Wistia to save bandwidth on your hosting server.
The overall number of assets on each page should be kept to a minimum- Remember that the more images and videos you include on a page, the longer it will take to load. It’s critical to be aware of the overall “size” of the materials on each page. Sliders (or carousels), background videos, huge photos, and background textures may add interest to a website, but they also slow down the page load time. Make an effort to strike a healthy balance between visual appeal and user experience.
Make use of a caching or page speed plugin.
Many elements influence website page load speed, but many are beyond the scope of the average marketer’s knowledge. Fortunately, depending on your CMS, there are numerous useful plugins or modules that can aid with the technical hard lifting.
Another technique to speed up your page load time is to use page caching. To eliminate time-consuming requests to your website’s database, cached pages are served up as static HTML versions of a certain page. A cached web page loads substantially faster, and it reduces server load by up to 80%. Users of WordPress can install one of the many popular pages caching plugins, such as W3 Total Cache, with ease.
WP Rocket, for example, is a sophisticated page speed solution for WordPress websites. It can handle not only page caching (reducing the requirement for a plugin like W3 Total Cache), but also a myriad of other page-speed optimization approaches, including:
- Browser caching is enabled.
- Images and video are loading slowly.
- Getting the most out of resources (HTML, CSS, JS)
- Query strings are being removed from static resources.
- Putting files together (Google fonts, CSS, JS)
- Database optimization
- Asynchronously loading CSS files
- The loading of JS files has been postponed.
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Upgrade your web hosting account today
The quality of your web hosting package can have a substantial positive or negative impact on the page load speed of your website. Particularly for larger, more resource-intensive websites and websites with a high volume of visitors.
While it may be tempting to use a low-cost shared (or grid) hosting platform, investing in a high-performance VPS, dedicated web hosting platform should be your top priority. These packages frequently include dedicated resources and a slew of crucial options for fine-tuning your server, as well as much quicker technological stacks.
In addition to this, you can minimize HTTP requests, enable Gzip compression, configure server settings, and use a CDN.
Why Does Web Hosting Matter?
When you visit a website, a lot of programs and code files are run remotely from a computer. A web server is another name for the computer.
The page speed is determined by the efficiency and capacity of the distant web server. A web server usually performs three key functions:
Improves Source Code Execution: To render a single webpage, a web server must execute millions of lines of code, regardless of the programming language used. The longer it takes the web server to execute all of this code, the longer it takes for the page to load.
Improves Database Queries Execution: Any CMS-based website code will have to perform database queries to get webpage content from a database. Therefore, a powerful web server is constantly in demand. To produce a single page, a WordPress website may issue over 100 database requests at once.
Improves Server File Execution: A typical webpage necessitates the web server serving dozens of files, including pictures, CSS, Javascript, and so on. The sooner the server renders them, the faster the browser loads the web page.
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Author Bio:
William Smith is a former professor at a reputed university in the USA. Following his retirement, he started offering online lessons on networking. At present, he is associated with Dissertationproviders.co.uk, where he is the managing head.