In today’s age of digital advancement, everything has become quicker and easier to access. Therefore, all online ventures have a common goal: to improve SERP ranking to gain more profit.
Numerous factors determine the ranking of a website on a search results page. A person who handles these factors effectively is a digital marketer. One of the key aspects that a digital marketer considers for search engine optimization is page speed.
This article delves deep into the definition and significance of page speed and some sensible ideas to improve the page loading speed of a website.
What Is Page Speed, And Why Is It Crucial For SEO?
Suppose you are browsing the internet for a piece of particular information. After searching your query on Google, you will find infinitely many pages in the response. You open one page from among these. The amount of time the page takes to load up on your click is called the page speed of that website.
Now say that the page takes too much time to load. Would you continue waiting or close the page and go for another faster one? Naturally, with our busy lives, we need instant solutions to our problems. So, we all prefer web pages that load as fast as possible. That is why page speed is so important in online content marketing.
Google looks for user friendliness and trustworthiness of a site when ranking it higher in search results. A well-optimized site has a better page speed, thus saving user’s time. This improves overall SERP ranking as well as conversion rates. Hence, page loading speed plays a pivotal role in SEO.
Six Effective Ways to Improve Your Page Loading Speed
If you want to earn the trust of consumers, and thus of Google, you need to have a few tricks up your sleeve to reduce the loading time of your website. Here are six effective ways to improve the loading speed of your web page:
1. Know What Is the Page Speed Of Your Speed Currently
The first step to improving the page speed is to analyze your current speed. There are many useful tools available on the internet, using which you can check the page speed of your website. Some include Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, WebPageTest and Pingdom Tools.
These tools give you insights into how fast your website loads upon clicking. The speed is usually scored between 0 and 100 so you can get an accurate idea of how much improvement is required.
2. Compress And Optimize the Main Content
Compress the size of your content so that the page loads faster. Optimizing your main content for faster loading speed is also a helpful tip. One of the best strategies to use here is HTTP compressions. These compressions compress the web page data, enabling bandwidth utilization and better page speed.
3. Upgrade To an Updated Programming Language Like Php8
While most websites use some or the other version of PHP, the latest version PHP8, promises a lot of efficiencies. A scripting language used by web developers; PHP is considered one of the best tools for creating web pages. So, upgrading to its most updated version could massively impact your site performance, especially page speed.
4. Cut Down on Redirects
URL redirects are an excellent way of earning user trustworthiness. This is because they guide the user from a broken or non-existent web page to a relevant and newer alternative. However, too many redirects on your page could mean more loading time.
5. Compress And Optimize Visual Media
Images and videos are a clever way to drive more traffic to your site. However, they come with a downside of slow loading pages. To improve your site’s page speed, consider compressing and optimizing images and videos. For example, reduce the file size of visual media or convert them to a better file format. You can also use optimization plugins.
6. Use Browser Caching Tools
Another handy tip to enhance the page speed of your web page is to make use of browser caching tools. These tools cache a page when the user clicks on the link and then save its static version for future requests. So, the cache needn’t be reloaded every time the user clicks the link. This in turn, improves the loading speed.
Conclusion
To sum it up, the page speed of your website is a critical factor affecting the overall site performance and conversion rates. So, it is mandatory to strategize to develop a good loading speed for your pages.