Page speed also known as “page load time” is the time it takes for a page to fully display all content. It’s imperative to ensure pages are loaded in a timely matter. Best practices suggest pages that load close to or under 3 seconds are well optimised.
Google has mentioned that page speed is a key factor and SEO ranking signal for it’s algorithm, therefore page speed not only should be considered for your visitors sake to help enhance user experience, but also for traffic and sales making your company more profitable, winning more customers and closing more deals.
There are several ways to speed up your website, but first, you should probably assess how your website currently stacks up against Google’s recommendations and page speed guides.
You can use Google’s free tool here to view your current page speed:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
To help increase your websites performance and page speed, there are certain elements to your website you must consider. Here are the top factors to page speed:
Enable compression
Using Gzip will minimize javascript and HTML files on your website. Be sure to do this on a developer website to minimize any damage done to your live website.
Optimise website sizes
Reducing the size of images loaded on the website can dramatically improve your web page speed.
Local Hosting
Changing to a local host can be a huge influence on page speed for local visitors. Local hosting shouldn’t cost any more, but will serve your content faster to NZ visitors. Talk to Firefly if you haven’t got local hosting organized or are unsure.
Reduce redirects
Every time a page redirects to another URL, the visitor has to wait. Try and limit page redirects to avoid page lag.
Browser Caching
Cashing your pages to serve static content means when a visitor comes back to your website, they will not have to reload your entire web page. Having your website cache set to 1 year expiry is standard practice.
CDN
You can also use a CDN (content distribution network) to store content and distribute the load of delivery more efficiently. CDN’s like Amazon Cloudfront are a good option to begin with.
If you know having a fast loading website is important, but don’t know how to go about making these changes or want to leave it to the experts, talk to Firefly.