Few things impact your website’s success and performance like its speed.
Because of this, it’s important to make sure you adopt the right tools to make sure your site is speedy so that it is properly ranked on search engines and recommended to visitors.
So, without further ado, let’s dive into everything to know about maximizing your website’s speed!
Why Website Speed Is So Important
There are thousands of web pages posting content every day on the web.
Two important traits come into play when it comes to why speed is important.
The first is that when there are so many people competing for a space in search results, there needs to be a way to organize it.
Secondly, search engines have a duty to provide quality information to match user intent.
If a search engine were to promote bad web pages with improper information, it would lose credibility.
Because of this, search engines like Google use a few markers to determine if a website is credible.
In addition to the quality of content, linking, photos, and similar measures, they also consider, you guessed it – webpage speed.
A high-functioning website is much more likely to have speedy loading times and be propelled forward by search engines.
So with the importance of speed in mind, what can a website owner do to increase speed? We’ve got the top tips to know below.
Run Google Analytics
The first approach to improving your website speed is to run a web performance test.
Google Analytics offers a great option for checking website speed and provides recommendations to help correct problems unique to your website.
While Google Analytics can be helpful, it’s not the only option. You might find a plugin or third-party option that works better for your needs.
Regardless of which application or website you use, the point is the same – it’s a great starting point for finding and correcting problem areas.
Within this step, it’s also a good idea to start looking at bugs that may be causing issues. Sites like Bugherd can help to diagnose and address problems with code.
Reduce Unused CSS and Plugins
One of the biggest reasons for a poorly performing website is the extra baggage that your website is carrying around. Think about it.
If you’re driving a car with a trailer that is weighed down with furniture, it’s bound to go slower. The same goes for a webpage.
If your webpage is full of unused CSS and plugins on the back end, the additional code is going to make your site perform worse than one with only the things necessary.
There are third-party options that can help you to detect unused CSS. You might also log into your web host and see which plugins are not being used.
Make Sure Photos Are Optimized
Pictures are one of the biggest causes of a poorly performing website. They require a lot of effort for your website to load.
The larger and the more intricate the photos are, the longer they will take to load, if at all. These factors play a big role in your website’s performance and how successful it is.
To solve the problem, choose to optimize images. There are a number of ways to optimize images. You can lazy load them, so they are loaded as the info is downloaded, helping to keep the webpage moving fast, even if the pictures don’t.
Another option is to choose smaller photos so that they do not take so long to load onto the website. Plus, the lower the quality, the quicker they’ll load.
That doesn’t mean you need to upload the smallest, lowest quality photos you can find, but that by compressing the files or reducing dimensions, you quicken the load time.
This can be done by downloading an image converter/compressor and uploading via media libraries versus directly imputing images into a post.
Conclusion
A well-functioning website is essential for its success. Performance is based as much on what goes on behind the scenes as what it does for what is at face value.
There are a number of ways to improve site performance, but it all begins with running the appropriate tests to find problems and appropriate solutions.
The best approach to keep your website running smoothly is to take corrective and preventative measures.
