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11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed banner

Page speed is one of the most important factors in your website’s performance, as page load time can have a significant impact on the user experience and your site’s ability to convert visitors into leads or buyers.

In fact, experiments conducted by Google have revealed that a difference of only half a second in loading times can result in a 20% reduction in web traffic. And the speed of your pages often determines the likelihood that your visitors will stay on your site.

If your page takes too long to load, your visitors may get tired of waiting and move on. If you want customers to linger a little longer on your products – in other words, if you want to reduce your bounce rate, increase visitor engagement by providing a better user experience (UX) – then page speed needs to be at the top of your priority list.

That’s why search engines like Google consider page speed an increasingly important factor in determining site rankings in search results. This means that you should take steps to increase your page speed as part of your SEO strategy. However, if you don’t understand how this metric works and the factors that influence it, you may have a hard time improving it.

In this article, we’ll review what page speed is, why it’s important, how to measure it, and finally go over ways to get better page speed.

What is Page Speed?

Page speed is the time it takes for your content to load when someone visits a page on your site. There are many factors that affect page speed. Some of the most important include:

  • The amount and type of your content ( text, images, videos…)
  • Themes and plugins installed on your site
  • The coding of your site
  • The distance the data travels,
  • The type of connection,
  • The device,
  • The operating system
  • The browser

All these elements affect your page speed and, consequently, the user experience of your site.

Why Is Page Speed Important?

Your website is normally designed to get people to do something: consume your content, use your app, sign up for your newsletter, make a purchase, etc. If your page loads slowly, your visitors will leave before it has even finished loading.

According to a Doubleclick (owned by Google) study published in September 2016 by Alex Shellhammer:

“Slow loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact publishers. In our new study, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, we found that 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.”

A similar study by Daniel An, Google, 2018 on page load industry benchmarks finds that:

“Recently, we trained a deep neural network—a computer system modeled on the human brain and nervous system—with a large set of bounce rate and conversions data. The neural net, which had a 90% prediction accuracy, found that as page load time goes from one second to seven seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases 113%.”

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

So as you can see when it comes to page speed, every second counts. In other words, if your pages don’t load in seconds, the likelihood of visitors leaving your site increases dramatically. The speed of your pages could compromise your goals and, in turn, hurt your ability to drive engagement and conversions.

Page speed also plays an essential role in search engine optimization (SEO) because, in Google’s algorithm, speed is an important ranking factor for computer and mobile searches. Websites that load quickly can expect to rank higher in the SERPs and attract more visitors.

Plus, there are all the user experience considerations. If your page loads quickly, visitors are more likely to stay, read your content, and ultimately convert.

On the other hand, if your web pages take too long to load, it can influence the perception of your brand by consumers. It is, therefore, necessary to focus on optimizing page speed to have a very effective website.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

How to measure page speed?

The first step is to determine the current performance of your pages with some tools. But before you start measuring your page speed, let’s review some basic website speed terminology so you can better understand what the tools offer.

Time to first byte” (TTFB)

Time to first byte (TTFB) is the number of milliseconds it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of the response from your web server.[1]

When you enter an address in the URL address bar at the top of your browser, you are sending a request to that page to load. The speed with which it responds to your request is the time it takes to load the first byte.

HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) requests

An HTTP request is an action to be performed on a resource identified by a given Request-URL.[2]When you send an HTTP request to the server, the website and your computer are communicating through what is called the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The more HTTP requests a website makes, the slower it is.

JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)

These two terms are languages in which many websites and website components are written.

“CSS and JavaScript both are used on Web pages with HTML but for different roles. CSS is used to design the webpage for better layouts for the user, that the user can feel comfortable with the Web page. JavaScript is used to create interaction between webpages and the user.[3]”

If your web page loads too many scripts and CSS files, it can create a performance problem because each resource must be retrieved by means of a separate HTTP request. This means that when the page loads, a lot of CSS and JavaScript files have to be fetched, and this can slow down the speed of your page.

Minification

Minification is the reduction of the size of web pages to speed up their download and reduce loading times, which simplifies the way servers read the symbols contained in the CSS and HTML coding of a given website.

Website caching

Website caching is a technology that makes websites extremely fast, resulting in improved SEO scores and user satisfaction. Every time a browser requests a web page, the server has to do a lot of complex and tedious calculations. It retrieves the latest items and generates other elements of your site. However, in many cases, the result of all these calculations will be exactly the same.

What caching does is simply make the server remember the final result, instead of processing each request separately. But a caching system is not limited to that, it also has a way to empty the cache and then regenerate it when specific conditions such as the publication of new content are met.

So when a single post is published a cache will only take into account the last result i.e. the last post published and all other pages that are not modified will remain intact.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

The Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a globally distributed network of servers and data centers that provides high availability and performance for service delivery to customers.

“A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a highly distributed platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user. This helps users around the world view the same high-quality content without slow loading times.[4]”

Now that we’ve covered the “why” of web page speed optimization and talked about those basic concepts, here’s the “how” to do it using some tools. There are several tools you can use to test and measure the speed of your web pages. Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix are very popular and easy-to-use tools for beginners.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool supported by Google that allows you to measure and test the speed of your web pages on desktop and mobile devices. To use PageSpeed Insights, simply enter the URL of the web page you want and then select the Analyze button.

It will then analyze the content of your page and give it separate scores on a scale of 0-100 and a list of suggestions for both desktop and mobile versions of your site.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

 

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

Now that you know how to test your site’s performance, it’s time to work on improving this key metric. With that in mind, let’s take a look at eleven ways to increase your page speed.

1. Choose a Hosting Solution Optimized for Performance

The web host you use plays a major role in the management and performance of your website. Opting for a mediocre web hosting service to get a lower monthly rate means mediocre performance. Indeed, this can be due to the fact that you are sharing resources among several websites on an overloaded server, which can end up hurting your page speed.

The impact of mediocre hosting can be more serious, especially if you have an e-commerce site characterized by uncontrollable traffic spikes, multimedia content, and large web files.

However, it is better to choose performance-oriented hosting that you can use and that provides a powerful platform designed for speed. Generally, these providers don’t offer shared hosting, which means you’ll never have to worry about other websites draining your potential resource pool.

 

 

2. Compress and Optimize Your Images

Images help improve the appearance of your web pages and increase the quality of your content. However, large images can also delay the loading time of your web pages, creating a less than optimal user experience.

But you can optimize your image files to improve your website’s performance. Image optimization involves reducing the size of your images, using a plugin or script, which allows your pages to load faster.

One of the problems with reducing the size of your images is that it can reduce their quality. The key to successfully optimizing images for the web is to find the perfect balance between minimal file size and acceptable image quality.

There are a few tricks that allow you to reduce the file size of the image while keeping it sufficiently their quality. But before you start editing your images, make sure you have chosen the best file type. The most common formats for images on the Web are JPEG (or JPG), PNG, and GIF.

  • PNG: The PNG format produces higher quality images, but also has a larger file size. PNG is mostly used for small images or when the image needs a transparent background, which JPEG does not allow. As in the case of a logo, illustration, etc.
  • JPEG: the JPEG format allows you to get a lighter image. You should use JPEGs for photos or images with lots of colors.
  • GIF: This is the best choice for moving images. It uses only lossless compression.

Reduce the File Size Before Uploading

The best method is to quickly resize the image using image editing software on your computer before uploading them to your site. The size of an image file depends mainly on its dimensions, quality, and format. By modifying these elements, you will be able to reduce the size of your images considerably.

 Use an image optimizer

  Once you have resized your images manually, you can use an optimization tool to make them even lighter. There are many online tools that allow you to upload an image and download an optimized version such as:

  • Imagify Image Optimizer
  • ShortPixel Image Optimizer

These plugins reduce the size of images even further while maintaining their quality to the maximum.

3. Using Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a technique that postpones the loading of non-critical resources until the page is loaded. Lazy loading is especially useful for pages with many photos and videos.

With lazy loading, the user’s browser loads the readable content first, then all the photos. This way, the user doesn’t have to wait to access the page and the images load as they are displayed. This can dramatically reduce load times for articles with tons of images.

To start using lazy loading on your site, you can install a plugin. There are many plugins you can use. One of the most popular is Lazy Load, which is extremely simple to use.  It allows you to load images only when they are visible.

4. Monitor  Mobile Page Speed

You should pay special attention to how your site loads on mobile devices, as the experience of mobile users has a considerable impact on all your site’s rankings.

In addition, it is in your best interest to provide a fast and mobile-friendly site. You can start by using Google’s Test My Site tool to check the speed of your own pages. To get started, simply enter your URL.

The results will first show you your site’s average 3G load time, as well as where it stands in relation to recommended best practices. It also shows you the estimated number of visitors lost due to load times.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

5. Reduce Your Redirects

A redirect is a function that automatically sends your website visitors to a new location. This is the case when you move or delete something on your website, and you want your visitors to arrive at the new location, not the old one.

 As you can see, in some cases, redirects are necessary, and even redirecting from a bad page to an updated page is considered good SEO practice.  But the process of redirecting slows down the loading of your pages because your visitors have to go through one or more additional connections before landing at the new location.

Each time a page is redirected to another site, the HTTP request and response process is prolonged. Too many redirects on your website can really hurt load times. However, by eliminating unnecessary redirects on your site, you can significantly increase page speed.

But before we get into the tools to clean up your redirects, it’s important that you understand the most common types of redirects:

301 redirects

301 redirects are permanent. They are used when a page has been irrevocably moved or deleted and you want to avoid visitors being confronted with a 404 ERROR on the outdated page. In this case, search engines will only display the new page.

302 redirects

 302 redirects are temporary. They are used when you simply redirect traffic to another page for a while. They are a bit confusing for search engines, which may end up showing both the old and new page in the search results.

How can I identify and reduce redirects?

There are several ways to reduce redirects.  The best way is to avoid creating unnecessary redirects when creating internal links and menus. It is best to avoid some redirects or at least shorten them so that your visitor has fewer obstacles to overcome to get to what they want.

 To identify redirects, you can take advantage of Google PageSpeed, which helps you check your page speed and also the redirects that lower your score.

You can also use a tool like Screaming Frog to identify all the redirects on your site and find out where they lead. Screaming Frog is another downloadable tool that allows you to load up to 500 URLs (with the free plan) and get a complete view of the type of redirects you have and where they are leading.

Once you’ve identified the offending redirects, all you have to do is remove the ones you don’t need.

To reduce redirects

  • So make sure to remove all the plugins you don’t really need, as they can lead to unnecessary redirects.
  • You can use the Redirection plugin to receive alerts about new redirects, 404 errors, and any other errors you’re not aware of.

6. Using Page Caching

Page Caching is another of the most effective methods that can help you improve the loading time of your Web pages and thus optimize your site for search engines.

Caching stores copies of your site’s files, reducing the work required by the server to generate and serve a web page to a visitor’s browser. Caching your Web pages can help reduce the time to first byte (TTFB) because the server needs to use fewer resources to load a page.

With page caching, a backup version of your page can be offered to a user instead of the most recent version of your page. The benefit to the user of viewing a cached version of the page is that they can get the information they are looking for more quickly.

Because this technique allows the browser to store a variety of information such as images, and JavaScript files, so that it does not have to reload the entire page each time a user visits it.

This is especially beneficial for high-traffic websites that use database information that does not have dynamic features or add new information often.

There are several ways to cache your web pages.

  • You can do it at the server level, meaning your host does it for you.
  • Another option is to use a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache, a free WordPress plugin that makes caching your web pages quick and easy.

7. Use Asynchronous and Defer Loading For Your CSS and JavaScript Files.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

Your site is composed of CSS and JavaScript files. These scripts can load synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous means that the files load one at a time, in the order in which they appear on your web page.

With this method, when the browser encounters a script, it stops loading other elements of the page until that file has been fully loaded first. 

Async and defer too are <script> attributes that determine how CSS files and JavaScript blocks are handled. Both async and defer tags perform similar functions, but they work somewhat differently.

Async and defer, by downloading scripts at the same time as the parser, augment the overall impact on page speed. In other words, asynchronous loading and defer allow multiple files to be loaded at the same time, which can speed up page performance.

The difference between async and defer is that in the case of async, the file is downloaded asynchronously and executed as soon as it is downloaded, whereas with deferring the file is downloaded asynchronously, but is not executed until the document analysis is complete.

To easily perform this task you can use a combination of the Autoptimize and Async JavaScript plugins.

8- Minify Resources (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript)

As mentioned above, the term “minification ” is a programming term that describes the process of removing unnecessary characters from the CSS, HTML, and Javascript files.

 These characters include spaces, line breaks, comments, and block delimiters that are unnecessary.  Reducing the size of your website’s CSS, HTML, and Javascript files allows the web browser to read them faster.

This saves you valuable time on the loading speed of your website pages. Reducing the size of your files also makes it easier to combine them.

The easiest way to reduce your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code in WordPress is to use a plugin. This allows you to optimize your WordPress site files to automatically increase page speed with just a few clicks.

There are a lot of plugins that can do the job, but Autoptimize is the most popular minification plugin because it’s easy to use and offers powerful performance features.

It can combine scripts, reduce and cache your code. As a bonus, you have additional options to optimize fonts, images, and more.

9- Take Advantage of A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN), is a network of servers that can help improve the page speed loading to deliver your content instantly to the end-user.

The reason why a CDN is necessary is that loading a web page takes some time if the server is requested for each request, especially for the user browsing from the other side of the world.

And on the other hand, your content will be more quickly available for a user who is close to the server of your web host. To bridge this gap, a CDN hosts and distributes copies of your site’s static content from servers located around the world.

By loading web page content from a server close to each visitor, a CDN reduces network latency and produces lower TTFBs. This optimizes performance by reducing the distance that data requests must travel between browsers and your host’s servers.

CDN is essential for all websites that have a global audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a blog or an online store, the Content Delivery Network (CDN) dramatically improves the user experience and increases overall productivity.

So if you run a strictly local business and the majority of your target audience is in your locality, using a CDN is not necessary since the webserver is at hand and does not need another resource to deliver the content.

Having a CDN on your site also has these advantages:

  • High-traffic websites can take advantage of the CDN server network.
    Since the CDN caches the content and provides its own copy that is immediately available to the end-user, even if the webserver is loaded with new requests. This will also save a lot of bandwidth.
  • CDN enhances security as it is optimized to identify known security threats such as attacks and spamming activities using bots and scripts.
  • CDN significantly improves page speed which contributes to user experience and also reduces bounce rate.
  • CDN improves your site’s ranking in the SERPs. As the performance of your website is significantly improved, it is natural to expect your website to rank higher in search engines.

There are many companies that offer CDN services and offer different packages. Like

  • Cloudflare
  • StackPath
  • Sucuri
  • KeyCDN

Before investing, analyze which CDN provider can serve you better.

Indeed, the integration process and the main purpose of each of these plugins to your WordPress site are pretty much the same and only the features and prices are different.

10- Eliminate unnecessary plugins

Plugins are basically a way to add code without having to write it yourself. So each plugin adds a bit of complexity to your site because it will add more code that the browser has to load, which can slow it down.

Having too many plugins on your site can cause unnecessary bloat that slows it down. And it’s also important to install well-developed plugins from a reputable source.

In addition, outdated or poorly maintained plugins can pose a security threat or even introduce compatibility issues that hurt performance. Some plugins may have overlapping functionality and features, and others are simply no longer relevant to your needs.

The beauty of plugins is that they give you very precise control over your site’s performance, as they are easy to replace and swap out for each other.

Some plugins may slow down your site more than others. Therefore, it’s a good idea to minimize the number of plugins you use on your WordPress site.

Of course, one of the easiest ways to do this is to deactivate and delete any plugins you are not currently using.  To identify which plugins are reducing the speed of your pages, you can try testing them individually.

First, disable all your plugins and then re-enable them one by one. Each time you enable a plugin, use a speed testing tool such as PageSpeed Insights to see if your score and timelines have been affected.

If you find that a plugin is slowing down the loading speed of your pages, it may be time to find another tool that performs the same function but is better optimized.

It’s also a good idea to review the plugins you have installed to see if they are really necessary.

11- Regularly Check Your Page Speed

By monitoring your page speed regularly, you can catch any problems early and keep your site in good shape. Even after you’ve achieved an acceptable load time, it’s important to monitor it because many factors affect your site’s speed, so it can change at any time.

There are many tools available to help you accomplish this task. The most useful for monitoring the overall performance of your site are Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.

Conclusion

Optimizing your page load time and providing visitors with a better user experience unlocks all the good things webmasters are looking for.

Using an optimized hosting solution, a CDN, and plugins to optimize your images, defer loading of scripts, caching your pages, and minifying your site’s files are ways that increase page speed as well as your chances of ranking well in search results.

 Don’t forget that decreasing every second your web pages take to load will greatly increase the chances of keeping your visitors on your site.

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11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed banner

Page speed is one of the most important factors in your website’s performance, as page load time can have a significant impact on the user experience and your site’s ability to convert visitors into leads or buyers.

In fact, experiments conducted by Google have revealed that a difference of only half a second in loading times can result in a 20% reduction in web traffic. And the speed of your pages often determines the likelihood that your visitors will stay on your site.

If your page takes too long to load, your visitors may get tired of waiting and move on. If you want customers to linger a little longer on your products – in other words, if you want to reduce your bounce rate, increase visitor engagement by providing a better user experience (UX) – then page speed needs to be at the top of your priority list.

That’s why search engines like Google consider page speed an increasingly important factor in determining site rankings in search results. This means that you should take steps to increase your page speed as part of your SEO strategy. However, if you don’t understand how this metric works and the factors that influence it, you may have a hard time improving it.

In this article, we’ll review what page speed is, why it’s important, how to measure it, and finally go over ways to get better page speed.

What is Page Speed?

Page speed is the time it takes for your content to load when someone visits a page on your site. There are many factors that affect page speed. Some of the most important include:

  • The amount and type of your content ( text, images, videos…)
  • Themes and plugins installed on your site
  • The coding of your site
  • The distance the data travels,
  • The type of connection,
  • The device,
  • The operating system
  • The browser

All these elements affect your page speed and, consequently, the user experience of your site.

Why Is Page Speed Important?

Your website is normally designed to get people to do something: consume your content, use your app, sign up for your newsletter, make a purchase, etc. If your page loads slowly, your visitors will leave before it has even finished loading.

According to a Doubleclick (owned by Google) study published in September 2016 by Alex Shellhammer:

“Slow loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact publishers. In our new study, “The Need for Mobile Speed”, we found that 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.”

A similar study by Daniel An, Google, 2018 on page load industry benchmarks finds that:

“Recently, we trained a deep neural network—a computer system modeled on the human brain and nervous system—with a large set of bounce rate and conversions data. The neural net, which had a 90% prediction accuracy, found that as page load time goes from one second to seven seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases 113%.”

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

So as you can see when it comes to page speed, every second counts. In other words, if your pages don’t load in seconds, the likelihood of visitors leaving your site increases dramatically. The speed of your pages could compromise your goals and, in turn, hurt your ability to drive engagement and conversions.

Page speed also plays an essential role in search engine optimization (SEO) because, in Google’s algorithm, speed is an important ranking factor for computer and mobile searches. Websites that load quickly can expect to rank higher in the SERPs and attract more visitors.

Plus, there are all the user experience considerations. If your page loads quickly, visitors are more likely to stay, read your content, and ultimately convert.

On the other hand, if your web pages take too long to load, it can influence the perception of your brand by consumers. It is, therefore, necessary to focus on optimizing page speed to have a very effective website.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

How to measure page speed?

The first step is to determine the current performance of your pages with some tools. But before you start measuring your page speed, let’s review some basic website speed terminology so you can better understand what the tools offer.

Time to first byte” (TTFB)

Time to first byte (TTFB) is the number of milliseconds it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of the response from your web server.[1]

When you enter an address in the URL address bar at the top of your browser, you are sending a request to that page to load. The speed with which it responds to your request is the time it takes to load the first byte.

HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) requests

An HTTP request is an action to be performed on a resource identified by a given Request-URL.[2]When you send an HTTP request to the server, the website and your computer are communicating through what is called the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The more HTTP requests a website makes, the slower it is.

JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet)

These two terms are languages in which many websites and website components are written.

“CSS and JavaScript both are used on Web pages with HTML but for different roles. CSS is used to design the webpage for better layouts for the user, that the user can feel comfortable with the Web page. JavaScript is used to create interaction between webpages and the user.[3]”

If your web page loads too many scripts and CSS files, it can create a performance problem because each resource must be retrieved by means of a separate HTTP request. This means that when the page loads, a lot of CSS and JavaScript files have to be fetched, and this can slow down the speed of your page.

Minification

Minification is the reduction of the size of web pages to speed up their download and reduce loading times, which simplifies the way servers read the symbols contained in the CSS and HTML coding of a given website.

Website caching

Website caching is a technology that makes websites extremely fast, resulting in improved SEO scores and user satisfaction. Every time a browser requests a web page, the server has to do a lot of complex and tedious calculations. It retrieves the latest items and generates other elements of your site. However, in many cases, the result of all these calculations will be exactly the same.

What caching does is simply make the server remember the final result, instead of processing each request separately. But a caching system is not limited to that, it also has a way to empty the cache and then regenerate it when specific conditions such as the publication of new content are met.

So when a single post is published a cache will only take into account the last result i.e. the last post published and all other pages that are not modified will remain intact.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

The Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a globally distributed network of servers and data centers that provides high availability and performance for service delivery to customers.

“A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a highly distributed platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading web page content by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user. This helps users around the world view the same high-quality content without slow loading times.[4]”

Now that we’ve covered the “why” of web page speed optimization and talked about those basic concepts, here’s the “how” to do it using some tools. There are several tools you can use to test and measure the speed of your web pages. Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix are very popular and easy-to-use tools for beginners.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool supported by Google that allows you to measure and test the speed of your web pages on desktop and mobile devices. To use PageSpeed Insights, simply enter the URL of the web page you want and then select the Analyze button.

It will then analyze the content of your page and give it separate scores on a scale of 0-100 and a list of suggestions for both desktop and mobile versions of your site.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

 

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

Now that you know how to test your site’s performance, it’s time to work on improving this key metric. With that in mind, let’s take a look at eleven ways to increase your page speed.

1. Choose a Hosting Solution Optimized for Performance

The web host you use plays a major role in the management and performance of your website. Opting for a mediocre web hosting service to get a lower monthly rate means mediocre performance. Indeed, this can be due to the fact that you are sharing resources among several websites on an overloaded server, which can end up hurting your page speed.

The impact of mediocre hosting can be more serious, especially if you have an e-commerce site characterized by uncontrollable traffic spikes, multimedia content, and large web files.

However, it is better to choose performance-oriented hosting that you can use and that provides a powerful platform designed for speed. Generally, these providers don’t offer shared hosting, which means you’ll never have to worry about other websites draining your potential resource pool.

 

 

2. Compress and Optimize Your Images

Images help improve the appearance of your web pages and increase the quality of your content. However, large images can also delay the loading time of your web pages, creating a less than optimal user experience.

But you can optimize your image files to improve your website’s performance. Image optimization involves reducing the size of your images, using a plugin or script, which allows your pages to load faster.

One of the problems with reducing the size of your images is that it can reduce their quality. The key to successfully optimizing images for the web is to find the perfect balance between minimal file size and acceptable image quality.

There are a few tricks that allow you to reduce the file size of the image while keeping it sufficiently their quality. But before you start editing your images, make sure you have chosen the best file type. The most common formats for images on the Web are JPEG (or JPG), PNG, and GIF.

  • PNG: The PNG format produces higher quality images, but also has a larger file size. PNG is mostly used for small images or when the image needs a transparent background, which JPEG does not allow. As in the case of a logo, illustration, etc.
  • JPEG: the JPEG format allows you to get a lighter image. You should use JPEGs for photos or images with lots of colors.
  • GIF: This is the best choice for moving images. It uses only lossless compression.

Reduce the File Size Before Uploading

The best method is to quickly resize the image using image editing software on your computer before uploading them to your site. The size of an image file depends mainly on its dimensions, quality, and format. By modifying these elements, you will be able to reduce the size of your images considerably.

 Use an image optimizer

  Once you have resized your images manually, you can use an optimization tool to make them even lighter. There are many online tools that allow you to upload an image and download an optimized version such as:

  • Imagify Image Optimizer
  • ShortPixel Image Optimizer

These plugins reduce the size of images even further while maintaining their quality to the maximum.

3. Using Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a technique that postpones the loading of non-critical resources until the page is loaded. Lazy loading is especially useful for pages with many photos and videos.

With lazy loading, the user’s browser loads the readable content first, then all the photos. This way, the user doesn’t have to wait to access the page and the images load as they are displayed. This can dramatically reduce load times for articles with tons of images.

To start using lazy loading on your site, you can install a plugin. There are many plugins you can use. One of the most popular is Lazy Load, which is extremely simple to use.  It allows you to load images only when they are visible.

4. Monitor  Mobile Page Speed

You should pay special attention to how your site loads on mobile devices, as the experience of mobile users has a considerable impact on all your site’s rankings.

In addition, it is in your best interest to provide a fast and mobile-friendly site. You can start by using Google’s Test My Site tool to check the speed of your own pages. To get started, simply enter your URL.

The results will first show you your site’s average 3G load time, as well as where it stands in relation to recommended best practices. It also shows you the estimated number of visitors lost due to load times.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

5. Reduce Your Redirects

A redirect is a function that automatically sends your website visitors to a new location. This is the case when you move or delete something on your website, and you want your visitors to arrive at the new location, not the old one.

 As you can see, in some cases, redirects are necessary, and even redirecting from a bad page to an updated page is considered good SEO practice.  But the process of redirecting slows down the loading of your pages because your visitors have to go through one or more additional connections before landing at the new location.

Each time a page is redirected to another site, the HTTP request and response process is prolonged. Too many redirects on your website can really hurt load times. However, by eliminating unnecessary redirects on your site, you can significantly increase page speed.

But before we get into the tools to clean up your redirects, it’s important that you understand the most common types of redirects:

301 redirects

301 redirects are permanent. They are used when a page has been irrevocably moved or deleted and you want to avoid visitors being confronted with a 404 ERROR on the outdated page. In this case, search engines will only display the new page.

302 redirects

 302 redirects are temporary. They are used when you simply redirect traffic to another page for a while. They are a bit confusing for search engines, which may end up showing both the old and new page in the search results.

How can I identify and reduce redirects?

There are several ways to reduce redirects.  The best way is to avoid creating unnecessary redirects when creating internal links and menus. It is best to avoid some redirects or at least shorten them so that your visitor has fewer obstacles to overcome to get to what they want.

 To identify redirects, you can take advantage of Google PageSpeed, which helps you check your page speed and also the redirects that lower your score.

You can also use a tool like Screaming Frog to identify all the redirects on your site and find out where they lead. Screaming Frog is another downloadable tool that allows you to load up to 500 URLs (with the free plan) and get a complete view of the type of redirects you have and where they are leading.

Once you’ve identified the offending redirects, all you have to do is remove the ones you don’t need.

To reduce redirects

  • So make sure to remove all the plugins you don’t really need, as they can lead to unnecessary redirects.
  • You can use the Redirection plugin to receive alerts about new redirects, 404 errors, and any other errors you’re not aware of.

6. Using Page Caching

Page Caching is another of the most effective methods that can help you improve the loading time of your Web pages and thus optimize your site for search engines.

Caching stores copies of your site’s files, reducing the work required by the server to generate and serve a web page to a visitor’s browser. Caching your Web pages can help reduce the time to first byte (TTFB) because the server needs to use fewer resources to load a page.

With page caching, a backup version of your page can be offered to a user instead of the most recent version of your page. The benefit to the user of viewing a cached version of the page is that they can get the information they are looking for more quickly.

Because this technique allows the browser to store a variety of information such as images, and JavaScript files, so that it does not have to reload the entire page each time a user visits it.

This is especially beneficial for high-traffic websites that use database information that does not have dynamic features or add new information often.

There are several ways to cache your web pages.

  • You can do it at the server level, meaning your host does it for you.
  • Another option is to use a caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache, a free WordPress plugin that makes caching your web pages quick and easy.

7. Use Asynchronous and Defer Loading For Your CSS and JavaScript Files.

11 Effective Ways to Improve Your Website’s Page Speed

Your site is composed of CSS and JavaScript files. These scripts can load synchronously or asynchronously. Synchronous means that the files load one at a time, in the order in which they appear on your web page.

With this method, when the browser encounters a script, it stops loading other elements of the page until that file has been fully loaded first. 

Async and defer too are <script> attributes that determine how CSS files and JavaScript blocks are handled. Both async and defer tags perform similar functions, but they work somewhat differently.

Async and defer, by downloading scripts at the same time as the parser, augment the overall impact on page speed. In other words, asynchronous loading and defer allow multiple files to be loaded at the same time, which can speed up page performance.

The difference between async and defer is that in the case of async, the file is downloaded asynchronously and executed as soon as it is downloaded, whereas with deferring the file is downloaded asynchronously, but is not executed until the document analysis is complete.

To easily perform this task you can use a combination of the Autoptimize and Async JavaScript plugins.

8- Minify Resources (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript)

As mentioned above, the term “minification ” is a programming term that describes the process of removing unnecessary characters from the CSS, HTML, and Javascript files.

 These characters include spaces, line breaks, comments, and block delimiters that are unnecessary.  Reducing the size of your website’s CSS, HTML, and Javascript files allows the web browser to read them faster.

This saves you valuable time on the loading speed of your website pages. Reducing the size of your files also makes it easier to combine them.

The easiest way to reduce your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code in WordPress is to use a plugin. This allows you to optimize your WordPress site files to automatically increase page speed with just a few clicks.

There are a lot of plugins that can do the job, but Autoptimize is the most popular minification plugin because it’s easy to use and offers powerful performance features.

It can combine scripts, reduce and cache your code. As a bonus, you have additional options to optimize fonts, images, and more.

9- Take Advantage of A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A content delivery network (CDN), is a network of servers that can help improve the page speed loading to deliver your content instantly to the end-user.

The reason why a CDN is necessary is that loading a web page takes some time if the server is requested for each request, especially for the user browsing from the other side of the world.

And on the other hand, your content will be more quickly available for a user who is close to the server of your web host. To bridge this gap, a CDN hosts and distributes copies of your site’s static content from servers located around the world.

By loading web page content from a server close to each visitor, a CDN reduces network latency and produces lower TTFBs. This optimizes performance by reducing the distance that data requests must travel between browsers and your host’s servers.

CDN is essential for all websites that have a global audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a blog or an online store, the Content Delivery Network (CDN) dramatically improves the user experience and increases overall productivity.

So if you run a strictly local business and the majority of your target audience is in your locality, using a CDN is not necessary since the webserver is at hand and does not need another resource to deliver the content.

Having a CDN on your site also has these advantages:

  • High-traffic websites can take advantage of the CDN server network.
    Since the CDN caches the content and provides its own copy that is immediately available to the end-user, even if the webserver is loaded with new requests. This will also save a lot of bandwidth.
  • CDN enhances security as it is optimized to identify known security threats such as attacks and spamming activities using bots and scripts.
  • CDN significantly improves page speed which contributes to user experience and also reduces bounce rate.
  • CDN improves your site’s ranking in the SERPs. As the performance of your website is significantly improved, it is natural to expect your website to rank higher in search engines.

There are many companies that offer CDN services and offer different packages. Like

  • Cloudflare
  • StackPath
  • Sucuri
  • KeyCDN

Before investing, analyze which CDN provider can serve you better.

Indeed, the integration process and the main purpose of each of these plugins to your WordPress site are pretty much the same and only the features and prices are different.

10- Eliminate unnecessary plugins

Plugins are basically a way to add code without having to write it yourself. So each plugin adds a bit of complexity to your site because it will add more code that the browser has to load, which can slow it down.

Having too many plugins on your site can cause unnecessary bloat that slows it down. And it’s also important to install well-developed plugins from a reputable source.

In addition, outdated or poorly maintained plugins can pose a security threat or even introduce compatibility issues that hurt performance. Some plugins may have overlapping functionality and features, and others are simply no longer relevant to your needs.

The beauty of plugins is that they give you very precise control over your site’s performance, as they are easy to replace and swap out for each other.

Some plugins may slow down your site more than others. Therefore, it’s a good idea to minimize the number of plugins you use on your WordPress site.

Of course, one of the easiest ways to do this is to deactivate and delete any plugins you are not currently using.  To identify which plugins are reducing the speed of your pages, you can try testing them individually.

First, disable all your plugins and then re-enable them one by one. Each time you enable a plugin, use a speed testing tool such as PageSpeed Insights to see if your score and timelines have been affected.

If you find that a plugin is slowing down the loading speed of your pages, it may be time to find another tool that performs the same function but is better optimized.

It’s also a good idea to review the plugins you have installed to see if they are really necessary.

11- Regularly Check Your Page Speed

By monitoring your page speed regularly, you can catch any problems early and keep your site in good shape. Even after you’ve achieved an acceptable load time, it’s important to monitor it because many factors affect your site’s speed, so it can change at any time.

There are many tools available to help you accomplish this task. The most useful for monitoring the overall performance of your site are Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.

Conclusion

Optimizing your page load time and providing visitors with a better user experience unlocks all the good things webmasters are looking for.

Using an optimized hosting solution, a CDN, and plugins to optimize your images, defer loading of scripts, caching your pages, and minifying your site’s files are ways that increase page speed as well as your chances of ranking well in search results.

 Don’t forget that decreasing every second your web pages take to load will greatly increase the chances of keeping your visitors on your site.

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