No one is happy with a stuttering or slow website. Search engines like Google don't like it either. After all, page speed is one of the critical factors Google uses to evaluate pages. Today, on World Stuttering Day, is therefore the perfect opportunity for us to share once again how you can improve your page speed. We don't mind stuttering here – by all means, take your time – but we are not going to sit around waiting for a stuttering, slow website page.
In honor of World Stuttering Day, we give you 5 tips in this article to combat a 'stuttering' website. This way, you ensure that your website is very fast and accessible and achieves a better ranking position.
How do you improve page speed?
Page speed actually stands for page load speed, the time it takes for a page to load completely. In other words, this is the time a web server needs to send the first byte of information to the browser.
Just as with stuttering, there is no single specific cause for a webpage to lag and load slowly. There are various aspects of a page that you can improve for higher page speed. We have briefly described them below and explained how you can best tackle this.
1. Reduce the size of your images and enable compression
Images that are too large are detrimental to your website's speed. Fortunately, there are handy tools that allow you to resize your images in no time. For example, use WP Smush to automatically compress and resize your images. In principle, resize all CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files larger than 150kb. You can use Gzip to reduce file sizes, and WP resmush.it for images.
A reduced version of an image can already provide a significant boost to your website's speed, while the image quality remains unchanged.
2. Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
Optimizing your code can also significantly improve page speed. To do this, remove things like code comments, unnecessary code, unnecessary spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters.
Also avoid the frequent use of redirects. This is because they cause the browser to send a new request to the server with every redirect. Therefore, remove unnecessary redirects and leave only the necessary ones. A good plugin for this in WordPress is WP Rocket.
3. Use browser caching
By default, browsers store a large amount of information when visiting a website. This includes information such as images, stylesheets, and JavaScript. Storing this information slows down page speed. You can reduce this by enabling browser caching. You can enable this via the WP Rocket plugin. Within this plugin, you can manually specify which data the browser should and should not save. Reduce the amount of stored data on your website to make it load faster.
4. Improve the server response
Sometimes your server slows down the website. An ideal server response is under 200ms. If your server response is above this, check with your hosting provider to see what might be wrong. Causes are often hosting abroad, a slow server at your hosting provider, or an error at the hosting provider.
5. Look at the competition
It is important to remember that Google assigns your website a certain ranking based on a comparison with other websites targeting the same keywords. Therefore, your goal should be to have a faster website than competitors working with the same keywords.
By using your mobile phone to search for the keyword that matters to you, you can compare the speeds of various competitors and get a better idea of the average speed score that is important to you. Therefore, always be specific and do not compare yourself to the absolute fastest machines on the internet (provided they use the same keywords as you do, of course).
Why is page speed so important?
A slow page has a negative impact on the usability of the website. You are probably familiar with this yourself: if a page loads slowly, you often click back and choose another website. A mobile user who clicks on your website in Google search results and returns to Google fairly quickly causes Google to associate a negative user signal with your website. And if your mobile website is slow, there is a good chance that a visitor will indeed return to the results page in Google quickly.
This can therefore be disastrous for your ranking position. It is a shame to lose visitors because of this and receive a lower ranking from Google. After all, the search engine always aims to provide its users with optimal ease of use and to continuously improve the visitor experience. Because mobile internet traffic is now an indispensable part of the online landscape, Google is focusing more and more on the responsiveness of websites.
Want to know more about your website's mobile speed?
Our experts are up to date with the latest developments and can tell you much more about the speed of your (mobile) website. So please do not hesitate to send an email (support@best4u.nl) or call (0575 512 125) if you have any questions about this or need assistance.