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What is page speed?
Page speed also known as load speed refers to the time that takes to load a web page on a user’s device which means how fast users get content on your webpage.
Google gives weightage and improves the ranking of the websites those load fast because it improves user experience.
We will discuss more about why it is important, how to improve it,
and tools to check your website speed, and will give many answers to your questions.
So let’s get started.
Why It Is Important
Page speed has been a confirmed ranking factor since 2010 by Google.
Improve page speed is important because. It directly impacts user experience, search engine ranking, and overall website performance.
A slow load page can lead to lower engagement and decrease conversion rate and it impacts your revenue.
Do you know that?
Amazon found every 100ms (milliseconds) of latency can cost them 1% in sales.
Another stat is that large media sites lose an additional 10% of users for every second their pages take to load.
According to Google if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load then the probability of bounce rate will be triple.
Ultimately page speed is important to drive the growth of your website, improve rankings and help to stay competitive in the online landscape.
Tools to check page load speed
To check how much time your website is taking to load, you can use various tools.
Keep in mind that not every tool uses the same data to show the page speed, different tools use different data to show the page speed.
So using different tools you will get an idea about what is affecting your page speed.
Let’s know
Page Speed Insights
Page speed insights (PSI). It is a tool developed by Google to know the performance of your website.
Page speed insights show whether your website has passed by assigning a score from 1 to 100 in the form of results.
It measures your website performance by core web vitals which is developed by Google.
It is a guideline to monitor website performance.
It also shows how much time your website is taking to load on both Mobile and Desktop.
The higher the number will be the better your website performance will be.
Page speed insights also show the ways to solve the issue that your website is facing to win better performance.
How is page speed calculated by Google SEO?
Google uses various performance metrics such as:
1. First Contentful Paint (FCP): This gauges how quickly the browser displays the first piece of content, such as text or images, on the screen.
2. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): This metric measures how long it takes for the largest element, like a block of text or an image, to load.
3. First Input Display (FID): This metric tracks how long it takes for a user to do an action, like clicking a link or button, after making their first contact with the browser.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): which measures how many elements moved during page loading, and analyzes a page’s look.
A low CLS score means a more stable and user-friendly experience.
GTmetrix
Another tool called GTmetrix allows you to get detailed information about your website issues related to page load speed
Just go to the GTmetrix tool and paste your website URL it will generate the report and it represents the result by giving grades from A to F like having,
an A Grade show the website is in excellent performance.
It also provides information about how to fix the issues shown in the report.
The Gtmetrix tools use a by default Vancouver, Canada server location to test the speed of the website
But if you do free registration then you can test your website from different server locations like Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, etc
Pingdom
The Pingdom speed test tool is a great tool you have to simply go and put your website URL and it will generate the result.
The good thing about the Pingdom page tool is that you can choose a location that is closer to your server.
And it is also a better idea to check from different locations to know how your website speed performance is.
How to improve your page speed
Now you know why page speed is important for SEO to increase your rankings. Right?
Now let’s know how you can improve your website speed.
I will show you 5 ways to improve page speed.
Let’s get started
1. Reduce Image size
The first thing on our list is to reduce image size the more high-quality images you upload on your website the more your it will load slowly.
So try to use average-quality images this will help to load your web page quickly.
And don’t try to use large images. Try to resize the image.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, convert your images into webp format from png and jpeg.
Because webp image format is a modern image format developed by Google.
That provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web.
Also supports animation and alpha transparency.
Ultimately keep in mind that using images that should not kill the user experience
There are a lot of tools out there that can optimize images.
I would recommend some below-mentioned tools such as
1. TinyPNG for compressing image size.
2. CloudConvert for converting into web format
3. Ezgif this all in one tool that offers custom optimize features.
If you are using wordpress then you can also use this plugin called smush
2. Choose a reliable hosting
Choosing a good hosting service plays a crucial role when it comes to page speed and performance.
Slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates.
It also reduced user engagement and negatively impacts your website’s success.
So, therefore, investing in reputable and reliable hosting is a crucial part of improving your website performance.
But there are a lot of other things that decrease your website speed,
You can optimize those things to improve website speed.
But having reliable hosting is also important.
3. Enable Browser caching
Enabling browser caching is a type of caching that does this;
It enables the browser to store a variety of website information such as stylesheets, logos, images, and javascript files.
So it does not have to load the entire page again when a user visits a site.
Your website will load quickly if you enable browser caching.
So how can you do that, don’t worry it can be done by a wordpress plugin called W3 Total cache.
It got one million total installed it is one of the most popular and recommended plugins.
4. Use a Content delivery network (CDN)
A Content delivery network CDN has distributed servers across the globe that work together.
That is what it does. It serves web content like text, photos, videos, and other multimedia files to users based on their geographic location.
It copies your website’s content by hosting it on many servers. When users request content from the browser,
Your webpage will load quickly.
Here is the best CDN service provider such as
1. Jetpack
2. Cloudflare
5. Minify HTML, Javascript, and CSS
It means deleting unused files of javascript, CSS, and HTML from your website.
The more code your website contains the more it will load slowly.
When it comes to minifying these HTML, JS, and CSS it includes things like whitespace, comments, newlines,
and any other unnecessary code that can be short.
It directly improves website speed.
To minify the code in your wordpress website you can use one of the following plugins such as
1. WP rocket
2. Autoptimize
Using one of these plugins on your website will help to minify the code and help to improve your website speed.
Another thing you should see, I shared an example below of how a standard CSS code looks after minifying how it looks.
Standard CSS code
/* Styles for a simple button */
.button {
background-color: #3498db;
color: #fff;
padding: 10px 20px;
border: none;
border-radius: 4px;
cursor: pointer;
}
/* Styles for the button when hovered */
.button:hover {
background-color: #2980b9;
}
Minify CSS code
.button{background-color:#3498db;color:#fff;padding:10px 20px;border:none;border-radius:4px;cursor:pointer}.button:hover{background-color:#2980b9}
FAQ
What is a good page load speed?
A good page speed is considered to be under 3 seconds. Pages that load within this timeframe are considered fast and offer an optimal user experience.
Is page speed a ranking factor?
Yes, Page speed has been a ranking factor since 2010. Google has been using it as one of the many signals in its search ranking algorithm.
What are the common mistakes that can slow down page speed?
Large, uncompressed images, the use of too many plugins and external scripts, and the disabling of browser cache are common errors that can slow down page speed.
Is Google page speed accurate?
Google page speed gives useful information, but its accuracy may be limited.
Because it evaluates performance using lab data, which may not fully reflect real-world user experience.
Conclusion
Finally, we come to the end of this blog.
Optimizing a website for quick load is very important both for SEO to achieve ranking in search results.
And for the users to provide a better user experience and help to win an audience.
Users want quick results or answers to their queries.
If your website does not fulfil their requirement they will land on the other websites.
I Hope now you have known better about page speed.
If you have any queries let me know in the comments
And remembered to share.