Do you remember a time when you’ve clicked a link to read an article or description, then waited patiently while your browser loaded it? When the screen was empty for a couple of seconds, did you press the backspace key and go for a search?
Most people have experienced online impatience before – as website owners, bloggers, or content writers, we want to avoid these kinds of events from occurring. In short, website speed is a critical factor in any online venture. It is a matter of courtesy for your visitors to respect their time and effort by speeding up a slow website.
The following steps on how to speed up your website will help you identify the problem areas and give you an idea about what contributes significantly to your page’s slowness.
Step 1: Test and Analyze Your Website Speed
Before doing any speed optimization, it is essential that you try testing and analyzing your website speed.
It will be a waste of time trying to optimize a site if you cannot correctly identify what makes it slow. Luckily for you, many online tools do all the hard work and even tell you what makes your page slow.
Try using Google’s Pages or similar speed-testing tools like GTmetrix, which scan your website and display findings regarding what contributes to your page’s load time. For instance, you need to have a Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) of less than 2.5 seconds to avoid having a high bounce rate.
Try analyzing both your website’s desktop and mobile views since many people use their phones to surf the web. Lastly, make sure you try analyzing different web pages on your website and not just your homepage.
Step 2: Optimize Images and Files That Slow Down Your Site
Website owners usually have image files that constitute the biggest percentage of their website’s size. While a picture may indeed be worth a thousand words, it can take a toll on your website’s performance if it has a large file size.
Compress the image file to speed up your website by using image compression tools or plugins if you are using WordPress. Converting JPEG to WebP can also be a good option to reduce the file size without noticing a significant difference in image quality.
Make sure you also reduce the image size. For example, do not upload a 3000 x 2000 resolution image to a website that uses a 1200 x 800 sized display area. Finally, use lazy loading features when embedding images, videos, or any other media in your blog posts or webpages.
Lazy loading means the website will not load videos or images automatically when you open a website or blog post. It may seem straightforward, but it can speed up your website by a significant percentage, especially if you have videos in your website content.
When it comes to videos and images, always remember to delete files that you no longer use.
Step 3: Identify and Fix Links That Are Damaging Your Website
In addition to having heavy file sizes, websites tend to have broken links that lead to long loading times. We fix links that redirect to error pages or have too many redirect chains.
Broken links that lead to 404 error pages waste your website visitors’ time and effort. You must delete all those links or redirect them to relevant blog pages or your website’s homepage. Having multiple redirect chains also impacts your website speed.
Redirects are helpful when the URL path for your webpages changes; however, there should not be multiple redirects for a single URL path. Redirect chains slow down your website’s speed, so make sure you are not using them.
Lastly, check external tools or content embedded from other websites, such as chat plugins, ads, social media widgets, and others. Many of these slow down your website, and you can choose to remove them if they are not necessary.
Finally, always use a backlink analyzer or your website’s dashboard features to scan your website for broken links and redirect chains. You should also remember to fix broken links every few months, especially when redesigning your website or deleting some of your blog posts.
Step 4: Minify Files, Use Caching To Increase Site Speed, And Keep Your Website Clean
Many content management systems (CMS) like WordPress allow you to customize or enhance your website’s performance by simply installing a few plugins. Sometimes, you can end up with too many plugins, which slows down your website.
Always try deleting plugins that you do not use to optimize your website speed. If you have a CMS that allows you to cache individual web pages, it is a good idea to enable it. Enabling page caching makes your website fast since it reduces the server response time. Additionally, you can minify your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files for your website.
It entails combining and removing extra characters or spacing in your files so that they take up less space. There are many tools that you can use to minify site files, especially if you are using a caching plugin for WordPress.
Remember to always make changes one step at a time so that you can identify what change hastened your website’s loading time.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is a good website loading time?
Ideally, your page should start displaying content within 2 to 3 seconds. The faster your website loads, the better since many people abandon a slow website before it finishes loading.
2. How often should I analyze my website speed?
The best time to analyze a website’s speed is after every website redesign or significant changes to your website’s structure or content.
You can also do speed analysis if you suspect it is slowing down after adding a lot of images or plugins. It is a good idea to analyze your website every few months or so, even if you have not made changes to it.
3. Does cheap hosting affect a website’s performance?
Shared hosting plans are usually cheaper, but they are not suitable for everyone. The reason is that many people use shared hosting, and websites on shared hosting tend to slow down sometimes because they share the same server.
If you are considering buying a cheap shared hosting plan, make sure the server has enough power to host your website and that it is compatible with your website design. Choosing a good web host can also improve website performance, especially those that provide solid-state drives (SSD) and sufficient server space and power.
Conclusion
A website’s speed determines its success, as it has a significant impact on its SEO. You can begin optimizing your page speed by analyzing it and removing broken links or redirect chains, optimizing image sizes, deleting unwanted plugins, and enabling page caching.