SEO strategy creation: Do you know how long your website takes to load? If your website’s loading time gets delayed by one second, it can cause:

16% decrease in customer satisfaction, which stops your audience from returning

11% fewer page views which means less brand awareness

7% drop in conversions, which means less money for you

To avoid this, here are 8 ways to increase your website’s page speed

SEO strategy creation: Minimise Your HTTP Requests

Your website makes HTTP requests for each element. This includes things like scripts, images, and stylesheets.

The downloading of on-page elements determines much of a website’s loading time. So if you have many of these elements on your website, you will have more HTTP requests.

Find out how many requests your website makes using the developer tools settings. Then, you can take steps to reduce clutter on your website and simplify the design. (seo strategy creation)

You should also get rid of unnecessary redirects. While these are often required to fix broken links, they create additional HTTP requests. This will slow down your website speed.

SEO strategy creation: Reduce the Time to First Byte (TTFB)

TTFB is the time browsers must wait before retrieving data from the server. Simply put, the time a page takes to start loading.

Your TTFB comprises three elements:

• HTTP request time
• Process request time
• Response time

The entire process refers to the time between the web browser’s HTTP request and the server’s HTTP response.

If TTFB exceeds 200ms, you need to take steps to improve that number. Some common causes of slow TTFB are network and website traffic issues, besides the increased number of HTTP requests.

Enabling browser caching is one of the best ways to reduce your TTFB, as discussed below.

SEO strategy creation: Ensure Browser Caching is Enabled

As mentioned, all elements must be loaded when someone visits a new website. These elements get saved in a cache, which is a temporary storage on their hard drive. The next time they visit that website, their browser can load that page without sending another HTTP request to the server.

If you enable caching, your website will load faster for returning visitors.  

SEO strategy creation: Upgrade Your Web Hosting Plan

Cheaper doesn’t always mean better. When you launch your website, you may choose a low-cost hosting plan. However, as your traffic increases, you must also upgrade your hosting plan. 

There are four types of web hosting:

• Shared hosting
• VPS hosting
• Dedicated server
• Cloud hosting

Additionally, the company you use and your chosen plan will impact your website speed. 

SEO strategy creation: Run Compression Audits

Website compression refers to compressing HTTP data before sending it to the server. This increases loading speed and bandwidth.

Gzip is the industry standard tool for compressing your data. This software finds similar lines of code and replaces them to make all of your files smaller. It’s ideal for HTML and CSS files, which have a lot of whitespace and repetitive code.  

Also, you should run a compression audit with a tool like GIDNetwork to learn how compressed files can help your website load faster.

SEO strategy creation: Reduce the Size of Images

As mentioned, all your files must be as small as possible for your website to be fast. Of course, ensure that you aren’t compromising on quality. 

One part is to reduce the image size. Also, you cannot completely ignore them because visual elements are necessary for your website. Without images, your site will look unprofessional and untrustworthy. 

A tool like Compressor.io helps you compress images without sacrificing quality. After you’ve compressed the images, make sure you save them as the right file type. JPG will be your best bet for the most part. You can use PNG files for files that require precise detail, such as a logo. 

SEO strategy creation: Minify and Combine Files

Minification deletes unnecessary characters from your files, like white space and formatting. Basically, it will remove anything that isn’t needed for your code to function. This ultimately reduces the size of your files.

Combining files minimises the number of HTTP requests by grouping them. For example, a browser may be able to download six smaller files faster than one large file. 

Consider it like sitting on a suitcase to get everything nice and tight. You can do this for:

• HTML files
• CSS files
• JavaScript files
• Google Fonts

The WP Rocket plugin is your best option if you have a WordPress website. If you use a different CMS, see if it has plugins that can minify and combine files for your website. It will certainly improve your website speed.

SEO strategy creation: Install a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

As you know, a server hosts your website. When someone visits your website, a request is sent to that server. So if you’ve high levels of traffic, requests will take longer to process, slowing down your website for these users.

But high traffic is good for your website, and the very last thing you want is to discourage visitors from returning because your website speed is too slow.

The proximity of a user to your server can also affect how fast your website is for them. People far away from your server will have slower loading times, even if there isn’t a lot of traffic at the time.

Content delivery networks solve that problem.

CDNs cache your website on global server networks. So, when a user requests a file from your website, the request is routed to the server closest to their physical location.

For instance, let’s say your origin server is in Bangalore, and you’re using a CDN to host your files worldwide. When a user from the US visits your site, their browser can download files from a nearby server.

Final Words

The impact of website speed can’t be ignored. Page loading times can make or break your site’s success.

You can’t simply launch a website and forget about it. Its loading speed must be monitored on a regular basis. Otherwise, you won’t know where you stand or what needs to be improved.

And remember that creating a fast website isn’t as easy as installing a few plugins. You must perform regular testing, tweaking, and housekeeping to keep your webpage speeds high.