Whilst no SEO specialist can know 100% every aspect of Google’s algorithm for ranking websites, there is enough research, data, and information to know what factors help a website to rank, and what do not. Some of these are more important than others, and one which you will find on numerous articles about best SEO practices is page load speed.
Page load speed is the time it takes each page to open in the browser of the person who clicked through to that page. Given Google’s focus on user experience, it follows that the quicker your website page opens, the better the experience is for the visitor, and what follows should be better rankings. Any SEO campaign should speed up the time it takes a website’s pages to open and here are ten ways this can be achieved.
Switch To The Optimal Hosting Solution: One basic way to improve your website’s speed is to switch to a hosting solution that can provide the page load speeds you desire. Specifically, moving to a dedicated server rather than using a shared server should manifest a faster page load speed.
Use a Content Distribution Network (CDN): Rather than all your content being stored on and loaded from your hosting server, you should store content on a third-party CDN. This then uses the closest data centre to the visitor to serve up that content on your website, meaning the website loads faster for them.
Reduce URL Redirects: If you use a lot of internal URL redirects within your website, it slows down the page laud speed as there are additional server requests to process the redirect. Carry out an audit on your websites’ redirects and remove those that are no longer necessary.
Utilise Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): With mobile now dominant for internet usage versus desktop, fast loading pages on mobile devices is a must. This can be achieved by using one of the AMP plugins which are available or ask your web developer to create AMP pages.
Reduce The Number Of Plugins You Use: Although we have just suggested you use a plugin, we also recommend that you also remove any plugins which are not essential or are known to make websites sluggish.
Compress Graphics And Image Files: Large graphics and image files are notorious for making website pages load slowly. You can fix this by compressing your image files and reuploading them to your website.
Remove Unneeded CSS: Any CSS that your page does not need, or use should be removed as superfluous CSS can cause website pages to load slowly.
Minimize, JavaScript, HTML and CSS: All of these website programming files can be a drag on website speeds so if they can be minimised, it should speed your website up. Several tools can be used to minimise each of them.
Reduce External Scripts: Whilst external scripts can add functionality to your website, they also pull on the resources of your hosting server, which leads to pages not loading as quickly as they should. As with plugins, identify external scripts which you do not need and remove them.
Enable Browser Caching: This is a function that can speed up your website’s delivery as it caches many of the files required to load it on a user’s browser. This means when they next visit your website it appears faster as many of its image, CSS, and JavaScript files are already present.