8 Tips on How to Improve Page Speed

Google has indicated site speed (and as a result, page speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. And research has shown that Google might be specifically measuring time to first byte as when it considers page speed. In addition, a slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation.

Page speed is also important to user experience. Pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page. Longer load times have also been shown to negatively affect conversions.

The performance of your website can be improved by following a series of tips that can be implemented at different levels of the project, from the server to the optimization of the code.

In this article, you’ll learn what is the importance of page speed and how to improve it.

1. Compress Images

Images are a great way to make your website more visually appealing, but they can also increase your page’s load time. Large image files can slow down your website, so it’s important to compress them.

There are a few types of image compression you could consider. You can use an online image compressor tool, like TinyPNG, or you can use an image editing program, like Photoshop. If you’re using WordPress, there are also plugins that can help you compress your images.

By compressing your images, you can reduce their file size and improve your website’s load time.

2. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a network of servers located in various places around the world. They store your website’s files and then serve them to visitors from the server that is closest to their location.

This can significantly reduce the time it takes for your website to load because the files don’t have to travel as far. Additionally, using a CDN can be beneficial for managing your site’s bandwidth more effectively. By distributing the load across multiple servers, it helps in ensuring that no single server is overwhelmed, thereby maintaining optimal site performance even during high traffic periods.

CDNs can also help you avoid traffic spikes and server crashes, which can slow down your website.

There are many CDNs available, and some are even free. Cloudflare, for example, offers a free CDN that you can use to speed up your website.

3. Reduce Redirects

Redirects can slow down your page load time. They increase the time it takes for the browser to reach the correct version of a page.

If you have a redirect on your page, it means that your website is not loading as quickly as it should. You can use a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights to find out if you have any redirects on your website.

If you do have redirects, you can remove them by updating the links in your website’s code. This will help to reduce the number of redirects and improve your page load time.

4. Enable Compression

Large pages take longer to load. One way to make your web pages smaller and increase your website speed is to compress your page size. James Ewen, of SEO agency SEOtagg based in London, recomends just that.“Gzip is a type of software that compresses your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. Then, the files are delivered to your visitors’ browsers. This is a simple and effective way to improve page speed.”

It’s also possible to compress your images. There are many image file types, but the most common are PNG and JPEG. You can use different methods to compress your images, like using online tools or saving the image in a smaller file size.

5. Minify Applications

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) tell your website how to display content. CSS can be complex, and many websites have a significant amount of CSS code.

When you minify CSS, you remove the white space, line breaks, and other unnecessary characters from your code. This can help to reduce the file size of your CSS, which can help your website load faster.

Minifying your CSS can be a little tricky, but there are a number of tools available that can help you do it. If you’re using a content management system like WordPress, there are also a number of plugins available that can help you minify your CSS.

If you’re not comfortable minifying your CSS yourself, you can always hire a professional to do it for you.

JavaScript is a powerful programming language that can add complex features to your website. However, it can also slow down your site if it’s not used correctly.

One common issue with JavaScript is that it can block the rendering of your page. This means that the browser won’t start to display the page until it has downloaded and executed all of the JavaScript code.

To avoid this, you can use the “async” or “defer” attributes in your HTML to tell the browser to download the JavaScript file without blocking the rendering of the page. You can also move JavaScript files to the bottom of the page, or load them asynchronously using JavaScript.

When your server is in a different location than the user trying to access your website, this can cause a delay in how long it takes for your server to respond to the user’s request.

Having a server in close proximity to your target audience is crucial for page speed optimization. If your target audience is in the United States, you should host your server in the United States. If your target audience is in the United Kingdom, you should host your server in the United Kingdom.

If your website is experiencing slow load times and you’re not sure why, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to get a comprehensive report on what’s causing the slow speed and how to fix it.

6. Use a CSS Image Map

A CSS image map is a great way to make your site load faster. This is because it allows you to combine multiple images into one file, which means that your server only has to make one request to load the image map instead of making multiple requests for each individual image.

In addition to reducing the number of requests that your server has to make, image maps can also help to reduce the amount of data that is transferred between the server and the user’s device, which can help to improve load times.

Using image maps is a great way to make your site load faster, but it’s important to make sure that you are using them correctly. Image maps can be a bit tricky to set up, so it’s best to leave this task to a professional.

7. Optimize the Order of Styles and Scripts

Styles and scripts are the building blocks of your website. They determine the layout, look, and feel of your website. The order in which they load can have a big impact on your website’s speed.

If you have a lot of styles and scripts, it’s important to make sure they load in the right order. This will help your website load faster and provide a better experience for your visitors.

You can use the defer attribute to specify that a script should be executed after the page has been parsed. This will help your website load faster because the browser doesn’t have to wait for the script to be parsed before it can continue loading the rest of the page.

You can also use the async attribute to specify that a script should be executed as soon as it is available. This will help your website load faster because the browser doesn’t have to wait for the script to be parsed before it can continue loading the rest of the page.

In general, you should try to load your styles and scripts as late as possible in the loading process. This will help your website load faster and provide a better experience for your visitors.

8. Remove Render-Blocking JavaScript

JavaScript can be a powerful tool for a website, but it can also be a major culprit when it comes to slowing down your page speed.

If you have a lot of JavaScript on your site, it could be causing your page to load more slowly than it should. This is because JavaScript can block the loading of other elements on the page, which can make the page load more slowly.

One way to fix this issue is to remove any unnecessary JavaScript from your site. You can also try deferring the loading of JavaScript until after the other elements on the page have loaded. This can help to speed up the page load time and improve the overall user experience.

Conclusion

It’s important for your website to load quickly. You don’t want to lose leads to your competition because your site takes too long to load. So, start improving your page speed today by using the tips listed above.