One of the most important factors for achieving good rankings on search engines is the loading speed of your website. A site that takes too long to load can be detrimental to the user experience (UX) and consequently generate a high bounce rate. You could lose more than half of your audience if your site has a loading time of over 3 seconds. Google's bots will scrutinize your site's speed to provide the best service to their users. Therefore, it is essential to keep a vigilant eye on this performance criterion. In this article, we will show you how to optimize your site for faster loading.
How to Evaluate the Current Loading Speed of Your Website?
Before you try to optimize your site's loading time, you first need to measure it. Fortunately, this isn't complicated. Google offers a handy tool to diagnose your pages regarding this factor.
You can visit Google PageSpeed Insights to evaluate the loading time of your pages. Once you enter a URL, you receive a score out of 100. This performance score is obtained through the weighted average of several metrics (First Contentful & Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, Speed Index, etc.). You will then get a detailed view of the reasons why your site takes a certain time to load and the areas that need improvement.
Another method to measure your site's loading speed is to use the SEMRush tool. On SEMRush, you can access speed data for your pages. To access it, simply follow this path:
- Local SEO
- Site Audit
- Thematic Score
- Performance
Here too, you can see which of your pages are slow to load, along with the reasons and areas for improvement.
Finally, you can also use the Pingdom tool. Like the previous tools, Pingdom evaluates your site's speed, but it also allows you to measure it from different locations around the world. You will get a detailed view of the size of your pages (image sizes, videos, etc.) and suggestions for improving your site's speed.
Assessing the speed of your pages is an important step in the SEO audit of your site.
5 Tips to Speed Up Your Website
Now, let’s get to the core of the matter. We will explore various steps to manage the optimization of your website's page loading times.
1 - Reduce the Size of Your Media Files (Images, Videos ...)
Using media files enhances the user experience, particularly for your articles, content, and, more generally, your site. Therefore, it's crucial to use images, videos, or audio to provide quality and differentiate yourself. However, these files can be quite large, so it’s essential to reduce their sizes to improve website speed.
Decrease the Size of Your Images (Compress Them)
To start, let’s consider the most commonly used file type on websites: images. They come in various formats (Jpg, Jpeg, png, gif, svg), but all need to be optimized for the web.
Pro tip: Use the SVG format for your logo so that it adapts to any size without losing quality.
Modern technologies allow us to have high-quality images. However, oftentimes, if an image is of very high quality, it is also large. A bulky media file can significantly impact your site’s loading speed. Therefore, you should compress your images before publishing them. This is a straightforward task that can be done using the site iloveIMG.
Video tutorial to reduce the size of images by 10 times:
Reduce the Size of Your Videos (Compress Them)
Similar to images, another widely used media type on the web is video. Again, there are many formats (MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, WEBP, etc.). Here are several methods to reduce the impact of video file size on your page loading speed:
- Embed your video from another platform (YouTube, Vimeo)
- Use a video compression tool (Clideo, Adobe Premiere)
The recommended option is to embed videos on your site using an <!-- fs-richtext-ignore --><embed> code.
If you use other types of media files besides images and videos on your website, ensure that the sizes of these files are not too large.
2 - Minify HTML, CSS, JavaScript ... (Make Your Code Lighter)
Behind your site lies an endless array of code lines in various languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.). The more pages and content your site comprises, the heavier the code becomes. However, you can reduce the size of your code by minifying it.
By minifying your code, you remove "unwanted" elements such as spaces and line breaks. By eliminating these elements, you lighten your code without affecting its functionality. Your code will be less readable to a human since it won’t have spaces, but a bot won’t have any problems deciphering it. Thus, the loading time of your pages will be significantly reduced.
How to minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code?
- On WordPress: Install the plugin: “Merge + Minify + Refresh” then configure the minification options
- On Webflow: Before publishing or exporting a project, go to the project settings, then to the “Hosting” tab, where you will find advanced options to enable HTML, CSS, and JavaScript minification
3 - Reduce Your Pages' Loading Time Worldwide Using a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
One of the most effective ways to increase your site’s loading speed is to use a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
But what is a CDN?
A CDN allows your site to be distributed locally through servers located globally via a network system. In other words, your content will be stored on different servers around the world, enabling users to access it more quickly depending on their location. This, in turn, accelerates page loading times.
If you have an international audience, considering a CDN could be a good option.
To use a CDN, consult your hosting provider.
4 - Make Sure to Choose the Right Hosting Offer and a Good Web Host
In this point, you should carefully examine the different options available in the market. The choice of a host and a type of hosting largely depends on the budget you have. However, some web hosts offer options that may better suit your needs, and sometimes it’s worth paying more for quality service.
Web hosting is a significant yet essential expense! Some types of hosting will offer you the option of having a dedicated server (only for your site) rather than shared hosting (which includes multiple websites). This is a significant advantage for generating more traffic and optimizing your page loading speed (especially for e-commerce sites) on the web.
To simplify this point, consider that the price you pay for hosting is merely an investment for better performance. Such performance will enable you to optimize your site and, consequently, your organic ranking.
Digidop offers you the opportunity to have a fast and secure site thanks to the Webflow creation software, which includes the Amazon AWS hosting.
5 - Other "Small" Possible Optimizations
If you are using WordPress as your CMS, there are additional steps compared to Webflow to improve your web pages' speed.
Reduce Your Code's Loading Time Using Gzip Compression
Install a plugin to enable Gzip compression: This reduces the loading time of your site's HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes.
Reduce the Number of Resources Your Site Needs to Load (Caching)
Install a plugin for resource caching: This will reduce the number of resources required to load the pages of your site.
Consider Your Site's Speed on Mobile
Use a responsive template for your site: loading speed is just as important, if not more so, on mobile than on desktop for Google.
⚠️ Pay attention to how your website's images adapt on mobile!
Organize Your Site's Code
Prioritize the elements of your code to display the most important content at the top of the page (especially for the loading of the homepage, which can be slow). This technical adjustment will ensure that your site displays the elements that should be seen first by users.
⚠️ Warning: using too many plugins can slow down the site's speed
To avoid the hassle of WordPress (having a multitude of plugins to the point of confusion), we recommend using the no-code Webflow platform. With Webflow, you can build sites without limits and without writing a single line of code. With its fully customizable CMS and interface, you can create a site that reflects your image, highly fast, and thus SEO optimized.
That's it! You now know how to improve the loading time of your pages. A fast-loading web page leads to a better conversion rate. Your audience and search engines will greatly thank you. Now that this part is done, all that’s left is to implement an SEO strategy to position yourself on queries and keywords to reach the top positions with your site.
Otherwise, our no-code web agency can also simplify your life with its expertise in natural referencing to boost your online visibility 🚀
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