Why does speed matters for SEO?
Search engines value websites that load faster. Page speed is a ranking factor according to Google.
Page speed affects user experience. People are impatient to wait for a website that loads slowly – they bounce (leave) immediately.
Bounce rates can significantly hurt your website because search engines factor that in as they rank websites. If search engines see that people are not spending more time on a website and leaving fast it could signal that the website is less relevant and is dropped in the rankings.
You need to make sure your website loads faster.
Factors affecting website speed
Loading too many files
Limit the number of asset files like CSS, JavaScript, and images that are loaded on a webpage. Load time drastically increases if too many files are loaded.
Installing too many plugins
If you’re using CMSs like WordPress installing too many plugins can increase loading times. Plugins will add their own CSS & JavaScript to the page increasing file loading.
Slow server
A slow server with limited RAM and CPU drastically increases loading times.
Blocking page rendering
Loading JavaScript in the head section blocks page rendering and initial content view. In addition, displaying large images above-the-fold increases page loading.
How to check website speed
There are various tool you can use to check website load time
- Google page speed insights shows your page speed and metrics like the time it takes to load the largest content/image on your website, layout shifts and how you can improve site speed.
- GTMetrix
- Pingdom
How to improve page speed
Limiting loaded files
Try limiting the number of resources like CSS, JavaScript, and images. Try inlining CSS where possible, i.e adding CSS in HTML instead of a separate CSS file.
You can combine separate CSS files into one file if it seems ideal.
Remove unnecessary or unused CSS, JavaScript, or unused Images.
Use compression and minification
Compression reduces file size. If you can’t eliminate files try compressing them. Apache offers the gzip module for compressing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or any other file. Take a look below:
Minification also decreases file size by removing empty spaces, tabs, and line breaks. You can minify your files manually using online tools like.
You can install the WP Litespeed plugin which automatically minifies files for you.
Using CDNs
A Content delivery network serves static resources like CSS and JavaScript using servers closest to the user
Instead of using your own server to host files use CDNs that host files using their own servers.
Lazy loading images
Lazy loading is a technique that loads Images only when they’re in view, i.e. when they’re scrolled to. This increases page loading as images are only loaded when required. They’re not all loaded once when a page loads.
Historically, JavaScript has (is) been used to implement lazy-loading. You can use WordPress plugins like Litespeed that automatically implements lazy-loading.
Modern browsers now have native lazy-loading implementation with the img loading attribute. Here’s an example.
<img loading="lazy" src="image.jpg" alt="..." />
Avoid putting JavaScript in the head section.
Browsers read a webpage from top to bottom. When JavaScript is encountered, page rendering is stopped until the JavaScript code completes execution.
This blocking means that the content that is supposed to be shown to the user is delayed until JavaScript finishes execution.
Put your JavaScript in the bottom, e.g before the closing body tag. This makes sure content loads fast and is displayed to the user without being blocked. You can use the defer attribute in the script tag to make JavaScript load after the page has fully rendered.
Use low size image formats
JPG is the most recognised image format. It is loosy meaning it can be compressed (reduced in size) by losing some image data (pixels).
On the other hand, PNG images are looseless and maintain their original quality. The file size tends to be big for PNG images compared to JPG.
However, modern image formats like WebP and avif offer even more size reduction. WebP is now supported by most browsers with avif still limited in support.
Use these formats for your web images. Both also support transparency (alpha channels).
Reduce Image Size for Free
Convert/compress images to small-sized formats like WebP
Remove large images above-the-fold
Above the fold is the first part of a page a user sees when he lands on a website. You need to avoid putting large images that take time to load in this area as this increases Large Contentful Paint time.
Use a fast server
Use a server with fast processing and high RAM storage.
The above optimisations won’t do much if the original server is slow.
Additionally, opt for servers using SSD drives for storage as they tend to be faster than HDDs.
Migrate from shared hosting to something better, e.g. a dedicated server, if your site grows big and needs more resources.
Summary
A slow website makes people bounce off(leave) fast reducing your rankings in the SERPs. If people are staying on your site longer it signals to Google that they are satisfied and pushes your website high up in the rankings.
