Web page loading speed is one of the crucial elements to meet SEO objectives. Know that your audience will decide to stay or leave based on how quickly they view your content. Therefore, it is essential to follow each of these tips to the letter. What are the benefits that each of them brings?
Also Read: 3 Free Tools to Test Your Website Page Speed
Page Contents
4 Ways to Increase Website Speed
1. Reduce the number of plugins and javascript
In your quest to provide the best to your audience, you may have saturated your page with various codes and formats. It may look more visually appealing, but this also causes it to charge very slowly.
Since speed is an important factor to ensure that your potential customers remain on your website, it is necessary to optimize it. This implies monitoring which plugins and unnecessary javascript codes you have added to clean them. Among others are:
- Weather forecast apps.
- Video bars: are they useful for your page?
- World or national news feeds: Usually your audience prefers to hear about these events through other means.
- Comment boxes: if you already have Facebook ones, you don’t need anything else at the moment.
- Third-party codes that have already expired.
To know exactly how fast your page loads, you can make a comparison between before and after removing these plugins with a tool like GtMetrix, which tells you in concrete figures the level of speed of the website, among many other factors.
Additionally, you can use a javascript code that allows you to package all your plugins in a couple of files, allowing them to load quickly and efficiently.
2. Activate browser caching functions
This means that the server gives the user a stored version of your website when they visit it again, instead of every element being loaded one by one (plugins, images, etc.).
The methods to do it vary, but some examples of this are:
-A plugin such as W3 Total Cache for WordPress-based sites. Once installed, it is possible to modify each of its options, such as “General Settings”, “Page Cache”, “Minify” and “Object Cache” to tell the system which elements will remain in memory, allowing the loading speed is the best.
-Modifying the .htaccess file with a code similar to the following :
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image / jpg “access 6 months”
ExpiresByType image / jpeg “access 6 months”
ExpiresByType image / gif “access 6 months”
ExpiresByType image / png “access 1 year”
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##
This code is indicating the time that the reader’s browser will keep each item in the cache. It is worth mentioning that the values can be modified for the time deemed convenient. Example: “1 year” instead of “6 months” for GIF images, for example.
3. Take care of the size of the photographs
It is important to add attractive images and in perfect resolution, since this type of content multiplies the visits. However, if the photos are very heavy, the upload speed will be drastically reduced.
To avoid this, an online tool like tinypng.com can help you reduce the size of photos without affecting their resolution. In just seconds you will have a new version of the image in high quality, ideal to add to your content.
Also, remember not to abuse the number of images. A 1,000-word blog post will look great with 4-5 photos, but if you decide to add 15 it can be distracting and slow to load.
4. Use CDNs
This type of technology will help reduce the digital distance between your audience and the server through which they access your information. In this way, someone who visits your page from Germany will take less time to load it if you use a CDN server that redistributes the content to a protocol close to their city, instead of waiting for the server located at the point of origin (Buenos Aires or Santiago De Chile, for example) display all the information.
Systems like TrueShield or StackPath offer hosting and redistribution plans with different features. The investment made will be reflected in a perfect web page speed, multiplying the possibilities of generating quality visits and traffic.
The speed of loading a website is a determining factor for the success of your project. Each previous tip aims to guarantee the reader’s permanence on the site and therefore increase the percentage of loyal and satisfied followers.