When it comes to your site’s more traffic, performance, page speed is of utmost importance, speed is crucial.
Improving website performance is essential for attracting traffic to a website and keeping site visitors engaged.
In this article, we will explain what page speed is, why it is important, and how to measure it. Then we will provide you with nine quick solutions you can use to improve page loading speed.
Why Is Page Speed Important for SEO and for more traffic?
Page speed is a critical factor in ranking your website higher in Google’s search engine results. It affects your search engine rankings because slow sites have a negative impact on user experience.
Google provides PageSpeed Insights for detailed performance testing, and developers can use Google Chrome DevTools, specifically the Network tab, to assess their site’s performance. The Network tab displays all HTTP requests, the size of requested assets, and the time taken for requests to be fulfilled.
According to a research of more than 5 million sites, the average website takes 10.3 seconds to load fully on desktop and 27.3 seconds to load on mobile.
That’s why it’s good practice to use various tools to check your site’s performance. You can evaluate your page speed with Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This will provide a broader view of your site’s health.
Use PageSpeed Insights Tool:
Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool that measures a webpage’s performance.
Use it to check the Core Web Vitals for any URL, see performance data, and get recommendations for improvement.
PageSpeed Insights uses both lab data and field data. Most sites run slowly due to large images that take up too much space.
To get started, open up the PageSpeed Insights tool and enter your website URL:
Click “Analyze” to initiate a test on your website by Google. Once the report is generated, it will provide comprehensive insights regarding your site’s performance and potential obstacles.
Now checked the details report below:
Use GTmetrix tool:
GTmetrix is a powerful tool that allows you to analyze the performance of your website. By entering your website’s URL into GTmetrix, you can receive detailed reports and recommendations to optimize your site’s speed, load times, and overall performance.
This tool generates a report that includes the following:
- Your structure score
- Your performance score
- Your Core Web Vitals score
- A speed visualization graphic
- Recommendations to improve performance
- And more
Go to GTmetrix, enter your URL, and click “Test your site.”
Here’s is what your GTmetrix report will look like:
Tips to improve website speed
Let’s analyze the five most common ways to improve page load speed time.
1. Compress Your Images Size:
To enhance the speed of your WordPress website, it is important to compress your images. Image compression reduces the file size of your images without compromising their visual quality. This optimization technique helps in improving the loading time of your web pages.
There are several ways to compress images for WordPress speed optimization:
- Manual Compression: Before uploading images to your WordPress site, use an image editing tool like Photoshop or GIMP to resize and compress them. Adjust the dimensions and quality settings to find the right balance between file size and visual appearance.
- WordPress Plugins: You can utilize image optimization plugins like Smush, Imagify, or ShortPixel, which automatically compress images upon upload or optimize existing images in your media library. These plugins employ various compression algorithms to reduce file sizes while maintaining image quality.
- Online Compression Tools: There are online tools like TinyPNG, JPEGmini, or Kraken.io that allow you to upload and compress images without installing any additional software. These tools employ advanced compression algorithms to reduce file sizes efficiently.
- Lazy Loading: Implement lazy loading on your WordPress site. This technique ensures that images are loaded only when they come into the viewport, reducing the initial load time of your pages. You can achieve lazy loading using plugins like WP Rocket or Lazy Load by WP Rocket.
If you use WordPress, one of the best ways to do this without spending much time is to use a plugin, like WP Smush Image.
Optimize images, turn on lazy load, resize, compress & improve your Google Page Speed with the incredibly powerful and 100% free WordPress image smusher.
Have a large number of images to compress? Smush’s powerful optimization features will continue to work their magic in the background, even when you’ve closed the plugin completely. You’ll receive an email when optimization has completed with a full report.
2. Enable Browser Caching:
Browser caching refers to the temporary storage of webpage data in a user’s browser. When a user visits a website, certain files like images, CSS, JavaScript, and other static resources are downloaded and stored locally on their device. The next time the user revisits the same webpage, their browser can retrieve these cached files from the local storage instead of downloading them again from the web server. This results in faster page load times and improved overall performance for the user.
By utilizing browser caching, websites can take advantage of the user’s browser capabilities to reduce the number of HTTP requests and minimize the amount of data that needs to be transferred between the server and the browser. This can significantly enhance the browsing experience, particularly for returning visitors or users who navigate through multiple pages of the same website.
To enable browser caching on a WordPress site, you can use plugins like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket.
W3 Total Cache (W3TC) improves the SEO, Core Web Vitals and overall user experience of your site by increasing website performance and reducing load times by leveraging features like content delivery network (CDN) integration and the latest best practices.
Speed up your site tremendously, improve core web vitals and the overall user experience for your visitors without having to change your WordPress host, theme, plugins or your content production workflow.
WP ROCKET:
WP Rocket is much more than just a WordPress caching plugin. It’s the most powerful solution to boost your loading time, improve your PageSpeed performance score, and optimize your Core Web Vitals.
3. Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML:
Minimizing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML can improve your page speed. Minification is the process of removing or fixing unnecessary or duplicated data without impacting how a browser will process the HTML, JS and CSS.
You can use an online minifier tool to minify your files. And if you own a WordPress website, a plugin like WP Rocket can help you minify your code.
The main difference between minification and compression is how the file size is reduced. Compression (GZIP) means replacing the repetitive code with a pointer that uses fewer spaces than the text.
4. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN):
Using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) can significantly enhance the performance and availability of your website, especially when promoting a product. A CDN is a distributed network of servers strategically placed in multiple locations worldwide. It works by caching and delivering your website’s content from the server closest to the user’s geographical location.
Good examples of CDNs are Cloudflare and Jetpack.
Monitoring your page load speed time is just one of the many steps that can improve your SEO rankings. This improves page speed dramatically.
