Page Speed

Why Is Website Speed Important:

Website speed is how quickly your website loads for users. This is based on an average of multiple page speeds — page speed, or page load time, refers to how long it takes for the elements like text and images on a page to fully load.

A fast-loading website improves user experience, enabling visitors to navigate your site quickly and conveniently. It also helps generate traffic and improve SEO rankings.

Search engines, particularly Google, place heavy importance on site speed when determining which websites to show at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).

Sorry, but you just can’t be number one if your site is moving too slow! Website speed optimization helps increase search engine optimization, or SEO) — so, it shouldn’t be ignored.

Conducting a regular website page speed test is important to ensure optimal performance. Here are some key factors to consider:

• Traffic – if the page load time increases from one to three seconds, the bounce probability increases by 32%.


• SEO – page speed is important for search engine optimization (SEO). If your page doesn’t load quickly, it will rank lower on search engine result pages (SERPs).


• Conversion rate – bad SEO and low traffic will negatively affect your conversion rate optimization efforts. If you run an eCommerce or subscription-based website, your visitors will not complete your desired actions, like buying your products or signing up for your newsletters.

Performing a periodic web speed test prevents you from having a slow website and experiencing its negative consequences. Aside from helping uncover any issues you might have with your web pages, conducting speed tests allows you to optimize your site and make it load faster.

How to Test Website Speed:

While there are various strategies for website speed testing, we recommend conducting several speed tests with multiple testing tools and different browsers. Doing so will provide a load time range, enabling you to get more accurate results.

We also recommend running multiple tests with each tool.

• Google PageSpeed Insights:
  
  
• GTmetrix:
  
  
• Pingdom:
  
  

How to improve website performance:

• Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML:
  By optimizing your code (including removing spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters), you can dramatically increase your page speed. Also remove code comments, formatting, and unused code.
  


• Reduce redirects:
  Each time a page redirects to another page, your visitor faces additional time waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. For example, if your mobile redirect pattern looks like this:
  example.com -> www.example.com -> m.example.com -> m.example.com/home
  ...each of those two additional redirects makes your page load slower.


• Remove render-blocking JavaScript:
  Browsers have to build a DOM tree by parsing HTML before they can render a page. If your browser encounters a script during this process, it has to stop and execute it before it can continue.
  
  First, here’s an example of the common way to load a CSS resource into the head section of a page: <link rel=”stylesheet” href="/css/style.css">
  Now, here’s how you can preload that request. I’ve also added a noscript fallback for browsers blocking script: <link rel="preload" href="/css/style.css" as="style" onload="this. rel='stylesheet'"> <noscript> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css"> </noscript>
  Async allows for the file to be downloaded asynchronously and then executed as soon as it’s downloaded. This means the file starts downloading while the HTML document parsers, and once downloaded, parsing is stopped for the script to execute and then continues parsing. Using the async attribute to load a resource may look something like this: <script type="text/javascript" src="/scripts/example.js" async></script>
• Image Optimization:
  

  Generally speaking, image optimization is the act of decreasing file size without losing quality. The goal is to reduce the amount of data a user has to download, so they can get the content they’re looking for faster without sacrificing quality.

  What happens when you use unoptimized images

  

  What happens when you use optimized images

  

  So how do you optimize images?

  • Use concise and direct image names
  • Compress and resize images to reduce their file size.
  • Use modern image formats like WebP when possible.
  • Implement lazy loading for images below the fold.
  • Add Image Alt Attributes Before Posting


• Use a preload link:
  The preload link allows the browser to start loading a resource before it is needed. This can be used to improve the loading speed of critical resources such as images and fonts.
  One such technique is the use of the link rel=preload tag.
  <link rel="preload" href="critical.js" as="script" />


• Use rel=canonical:
  Make sure all your pages that can be gotten to through multiple URLs have the rel=canonical tag directing search engines to the mainpage.
  Rel=canonical tags reduce confusion when another site scrapes your content, ultimately creating duplicate content.


• One H1 Tag Per Page:
  Don’t use multiple H1 tags on a single page.


• Enable GZIP Compression:
  GZIP compression is another method to reduce the size of website files. This way, visitors will download compressed data instead of full-sized files, resulting in faster loading times on the client’s side.


• Use meta tags in your content
  Meta tag elements can be for the benefit of search engines, like Google. The example below is setting a meta description that tells Google about the page. And Google and other search engines often display the meta description in search results.
  
  Meta tags can also benefit your customers by helping improve user experience. For example, the viewport meta tag tells the browser to render a webpage according to screen size.
  


• Add descriptive link text:
  Replace generic phrases like "click here" and "learn more" with specific descriptions. In general, write link text that clearly indicates what type of content users will get if they follow the hyperlink.


• Make your links crawlable:
  • Use the href attribute correctly
  • Add all of your pages to the correct sitemap
  • Make sure every page on your website has incoming internal links and that you use the correct anchor text for them


• Buttons must have discernible text that clearly describes the destination, purpose, function, or action for screenreader users.
  The input-button-name rule separates functionality from the button-name rule to ensure that input buttons have discernible text; advise relevant to input button names was incorrect for button elements.


• Set Up a CDN:
  Another method to optimize your site speed is by setting up a CDN. It provides a network of proxy servers that handle user requests.
  When a user accesses your website, the browser sends requests to get your website’s data. Without a CDN, the origin server – the primary source of your website – handles all the traffic requests.
  A CDN cuts this process by taking some requests on their servers. Moreover, these CDN servers may be geographically closer to the users, reducing the content delivery time.
  Spreading the requests to a CDN also helps reduce the bandwidth usage on the main server so it can handle traffic better.
  


• Leverage Caching:
  Website caching is a feature that copies and saves web page data for future use. The cached data typically includes the site’s static content, such as images, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files.
  With caching, web browsers can display websites without fetching resources directly from the web server. This results in shorter, more efficient data transmission, allowing your website to load faster.