Page speed is the page load time, it is the time taken to fully display the content of a specific page.Page speed and Site speed are two different things, site speed is the page speed for the sample of page views on a site. Faster the page speed higher the conversions because don’t like to wait. So Page Speed Optimization is very important.
CONTENT
- What is Page Speed?
- Why is Page Speed Important?
- Knowing Your Page Speed.
- Reasons for Poor Load Time
- Top Tips to Optimize Page Speed
- Conclusion
WHY IS PAGE SPEED IMPORTANT?
Page speed has a very important role in ranking, conversions and customer satisfaction. Your page speed should be between 1 to 3 seconds to make a good impact. Suppose a customer clicks on your webpage link and your page speed is 5 seconds, so the visitor will exit the link in 2 to 3 seconds and there are chances that he will not return to your site in future also.
Longer page speed can also damage your site by making crawlers to crawl fewer pages and this will contrarily affect your indexation. Pages with longer load time have higher bounce rates so its going to affect your ranking also.
Page speed is a part of Google’s Ranking Algorithm. If two website have the equal authority and relevancy then the page speed may be the deciding factor in the organic rankings, here come the role of Page Speed Optimization.
KNOW YOUR PAGE SPEED
There are many tools to know your page site that will help you in Page Speed Optimization, some of them are Google Pagespeed Insights, Webpagetest, Pagelocity, PageScoring, on crawl.
REASONS FOR POOR LOAD TIME
- Cheap web hosting – Cheap web hosting may lead to low page speed performances, so you need to get hosting according to you website size. So for page speed optomization, you need to have a good web hosting. Check the Blog to know more about web hosting impacts on page speed and how to choose perfect web hosting Impacts of Web Hosting on Page Speed
- Unoptimized Images – Image size should be reduced to load faster.
- Unoptimized browser and plugins – Use updated plugins and evaluate the performance of your website of different browsers.
- To many ads also lowers your page speed .
- Dense coding of HTML/CSS also impacts your page load time.
- Content served without HTTP compressions.
Enable Compression
Reduce the size of your HTML, CSS, And Javascript files by using Gzip softwareMinify CSS
If the external CSS resources are small, you can insert those directly into the HTML document. But when the CSS file is large then it can slow down your page speeds.
CSS file have thousand of lines of code. Each comma, space, line break, tab, block delimiters, code comment adds to your file size. So what you need to do is remove all unnecessary bits to improve the page speed.
Minify Javascript
Use shorter variables and function names, remove unused codes, formatting and code comments. To minify Javascript try UglifyJS. But it should be done carefully, some javascript code depends upon the formatting of scripts in the page.
Minify HTML
Remove unused code, formatting, try HTMLMinifier for the minification of HTML. Remove unnecessary data and it will boos your page speed.
Avoid Redirects
When a page redirects to another page, so there is a addition of time for HTTP request-response cycle to complete. Avoid redirects with internal links, after identifying the redirecting internal links, check that all the internal site links use the new URL, this will help you in Page Speed Optimization by reducing page load speed.
Image Optimization
Website having lots of images or larger size images will be suffering from slower load time. So you need to compress the image size by using the software’s like Photoshop or Fireworks. JPG images have the larger size so you can use the PNG format, it will not compromise the quality as PNG image format also has a good quality. It will minimize the image size and will help in loading your page faster.
Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
A content delivery network has servers all over the world, so hosting your media files on a CDN is the best way to speed up your page. Imagine you are located in India so in India your site will load quickly due to a shorter distance. But when a visitor from California wants to visit your site, the web page data must travel from India to the USA stopping at multiple routers on the way. There will be delay resulting in longer load time.
So to increase page speed, a copy of your page should exist in both India and the USA. This is what CDN does so the content delivery network is highly recommended for page speed optimization.
For complete details for choosing a perfect CDN service provider, read this blog Tips to Choose Perfect Content Delivery Network (CDN) Service Providers
Use a fast hosting company
Hosting has a huge impact on you page speed. If your hosting is slow or cheap then you can’t speed up your site. If you have the good amount of visitors then it is recommended that you should move from shared hosting plan to dedicated hosting plan. Your site will move to a server that has resources specially dedicated to your site.
Compare the plans, check the reviews and the speed of the servers, then decide which hosting plan is suitable for your business. Hosting is the first priority in page speed optimization.
Enable Caching
When someone visits your site, they have to download all your site files from your website server. By enabling cache, they are stored in browser’s cache so that when visitors visit another page on your site, he only needs to download the files that are unique. Also when visitors visit your site next time the browser can load its cache quickly and your speed will increase.
Extra or outdated Plugins
If there is any plugin that you no longer require, remove it. Use the updated plugins so that your page speed does not get affected
Database Optimization
Most sites use database to store information. But the database can affect your page speed if you don’t use indexing for your database. Indexing is the best way to improve your page speed, it helps your database find information quickly. Indexing helps in improving page speed but you should also cleanup your database to reduce its size which helps in speed up time.
Web font performance
When you use web fonts like Google fonts, they add extra HTTP requests to external resources. Using web fonts affects the overall speed of your pages. Some recommendations for better web font performance are- choose only styles you need, store in local storage, keep your character sets down to a minimum.
This Theory of Keyword Research leads us to create targeted Digital Assets.
Page speed optimization is very important factor in ranking and conversion. Now you know how to increase your page speed so you should follow these techniques to improve your page speed. It also benefits in the user experience, people like to visit the sites with good page speed.