So, what’s page speed optimization, and how essential is this factor to your overall website ranking? Page speed optimization should be at the core of your SEO strategy as it is the most important factor. Your page speed is as significant as site speed is to SEO. However, page speed should not be mistaken for website speed.

Your page speed is basically how long it takes the content of a particular page on your website to load completely or in more technical terms, “time to first byte” – the time it takes for your user’s browser to get the first byte of data from your web server. Just like site speed which calculates how fast a sample of page views on your website, page speed is crucial to your search rankings.

Numerous reports are stating, including Google admitting in 2010, that site speed as a result of the high relevance of page speed is used as a web search ranking factor. Now that this is the case, how can you optimize page speed and progress your search rankings? 

Many digital marketing consultants and SEO specialists believe that page speed would be critical to Google since a good user experience is one of its primary aims for its users. It’s now noteworthy to take measures to get your page speed right by focusing on the following areas.

Page Speed Optimisation Factors

1. Time To First Byte (TTFB)

An area to concentrate on to get insight on how to improve your page speed is how long it takes your browser to get the first byte of data from your web server. This is what is technically recognized as “time to first byte”. Running a test using Google’s PageSpeed Insights doesn’t only deliver you with site speed data but also contains suggestions on areas to work on to progress speed. 

A perfect tool to estimate this is Google’s PageSpeed Insights, which evaluates reports from the FCP (First Content Paint) and DCL (DOM Content Loaded) by asking for data from CrUX (Chrome User Experience Report).

2. Web Hosting

While most SEO specialists and search engine marketers would go forward and start modifying their web design and searching what plugins may cause a lag in page speed, the culprit is not always evident. Your web host would play a major role in how quickly the pages of your website load. You can run a lean one-page website on certain hosting services and still come short on page speed or website speed.

Factors such as geographic proximity to users, cloud hosts are superior in this respect, the volume of clients on a single server and the size of a server’s RAM and bandwidth limit all impact the performance of a website hosted on any server. Since most of the users will never return to a website that takes longer to load, a poor hosting provider or digital marketing service company could cost you thousands of dollars in lost revenue opportunities. This is not counting the damage of traffic as a result of negative search rankings from poor SEO.

3. Redundant And Inactive Plugins

Inactive plugins on your website are often serious reasons for the slow speed of a site. Although, the reason plugins have got the option to “activate” and “deactivate” them is to make them inactive while you choose whether they may serve any requirement in the future, instead of deleting them. However, the most effective way to avoid plugins that are not being used from slowing down your website is to remove them.

To avoid plugins from unreasonably slowing down pages of your website, an SEO consultant can consider taking the following measures:

• Only install plugins when they are required
• Clear your website cache and Minified CSS/JS after deleting a plugin
• If a plugin hasn’t been active for three months, consider deleting it from your website
• Only install plugins that are latest and marked as compatible with your WordPress version

In addition to causing lags in your website’s page speed, inactive plugins may cause vulnerability to the security of your website leaving you unprotected from attackers and hackers. This certainly will negatively affect your website’s SEO and rankings, costing you traffic and revenue.

4. Clean Your Website Codes

Another area you should watch for when dealing with page speed is the codes that develop your website. While this is a more technical task and is better handled by technical specialists, taking care of your website codes and safeguarding nothing is off can help you gain some speed.

When examining website codes that could influence site speed, look into these areas:

• JavaScript
• CSS
• HTML
• Theme files

Poorly configured theme files may conflict with your users’ browser, thus negatively affecting how fast your website loads. Below are some factors you may want to examine to ensure your website codes are in proper shape:

• Allow dynamic caching
• Minify JavaScript and CSS files
• Avoid making changes to parent theme files and opt for child theme as an alternative

5. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

Using a content delivery network or content distribution network, usually known as CDNs can considerably decrease the time it takes to completely load pages of your website. When users are surfing the internet, proximity to your server can affect how fast content is delivered to them.

What CDN does is host your website content in the cloud, and let the adjacent server to your clients handle the delivery of the content when they access your website. Since geographic proximity is also an aspect in the speed of content delivery, using a CDN takes care of this and removes the associated delays that come with loading a website’s content from a distant location.

CDNs also utilize caching to decrease your hosting bandwidth, making room for smooth content delivery and execution. As well as, it also helps prevent downtimes with your website.

When you choose a CDN, the following features of your website’s content are taken care of:

• Images and videos on your server
• Your website JavaScript files
• HTML pages
• Stylesheets

Besides speeding up your website and helping you to improve your SEO, utilizing a CDN can also be beneficial in the following areas:

• Security: Your website can be safe from hackers and random attacks targeting your website
• Mitigation against DDOS attacks: Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attacks is the most common form of hacks launched against websites to date when a malicious agent attempts to disrupt the service of your website. CDNs can strengthen your website against this common attack.
• Increases content redundancy and availability: Since CDNs keep content distributed, pages of your website will stay active and accessible should there be a malware malfunction or spike in traffic

 6. Images

Images are essential elements of every webpage. And approximately nine out of ten pages on a website would comprise at least an image. Images consume the maximum bandwidth on a website. To enhance your website page speed and enjoy solid SEO dividends, SEO specialists should optimize images on your website to consume as little bandwidth as possible. Heavy and large images are among the top reasons a website may experience slow page speed.

Images that are larger than the content area of your website would overlap on the screen, causing the user experience to suffer. Getting your image size correct can make a vast difference in how your page loads.

Conclusion

Page speed is, as we’ve realized, a significant factor in Google’s SEO rankings. And getting page speed optimization right takes the lead in improving your website’s page speed. Think about your browsing habits. If you would not like to wait around for a page to load, why would you expect your users to do so? They would not either. That’s why it’s important to understand that every customer who bounces from your site is hypothetically a lost sale. 

However, If you want to drive results for your company you can hire digital marketing services from a reputed SEO marketing company like QuadVentures.com.my

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