Don’t keep users waiting, increase your website speed
Google implemented numerous ranking factors to optimize your visitors’ user experience. Your website speed is a crucial part of this. Because let’s be honest, nobody likes waiting a long time, right?
Below, we discuss exactly what website speed is, what consequences it has for your SEO and, above all, how you can make your website lightning fast (again). Discover our practical tips and advice and get started with confidence. No time to read further? No worries. Digital Climax is already at the starting blocks for you, equipped with the best SEO running shoes.
Request your free SEO scan today. That way, you’ll know exactly how your website is performing right now. Together, we’ll dig through everything step by step. Ready? Set. Go!
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What is page speed?
Website speed is the time your website needs to load completely. This load time starts from the moment a user clicks your link or enters your URL, and runs until the moment your page is fully visible and interactive.
A fast website, important for users and Google
Users land on a page of your website with a specific goal in mind: they are looking for information, they want to buy something, or they are looking for advice. Your visitors expect an answer as quickly as possible, a shopping cart that processes their purchases at lightning speed, or a handy and efficient overview of tips. And all of that, yes, without waiting.
Do impatient visitors leave your page without completing their purchase because they have to wait too long for their shopping cart to load? Then your conversion rate drops and your performance on the results page declines.
Users love lightning-fast pages
Visitors who have to wait too long for your pages to load feel cheated and click away just as fast. This impacts your website’s bounce rate, the phenomenon where visitors leave your page without taking any action.
So ensure a lightning-fast website, don’t give your users a chance to leave, hold their attention, and encourage them to spend as much time as possible on your interactive pages.
Google loves high page speed
For the search engine, load time is an important factor for ranking your website. Do surfers stick around on your page for a long time? Good.
Do they click away relentlessly after a few seconds? Then Google sees this as an indication of a non-relevant website (even if your content might be extremely relevant) and your ranking on the SERP drops.
Analyze your website speed
Your server always loads your website chronologically. Your users always see the above the fold section first (the part that is immediately visible without scrolling).
If you place a video, image, slider, or other element in this section, but it takes too long to load this content, your visitors might not see any information for the first few (milli)seconds. Your users will scroll straight through to the rest of your page, or click away mercilessly.
But how do you know if your website loads fast or not? Start with a thorough analysis of your current load time. A handy tool for this is PageSpeed Insights. Enter your website or page URL and click ‘analyze’. You’ll get an overview of your load speed for both mobile and desktop versions.
Tip:
When PageSpeed Insights doesn’t have enough data for a specific page, you’ll see the performance of your homepage.
The tool displays your performance in colors, where red is poor, orange is average, and green is a good score.
There is indeed a difference in load speeds for mobile and desktop versions. The mobile view uses a slow connection in the background or has poor reception in some places. In our opinion, the mobile connection is still too slow, but it is realistic.
Most users visit your website on mobile, so we like to analyze these load times. The overall mobile score in our example is 54, which means the website loads quite slowly. Especially compared to the desktop performance, which has a score of 94.
There are several indicators that reflect your page speed:
- First Contentful Paint (FCP): shows the number of (milli)seconds your user waits to see the first element of your page. The lower this score, the better the user experience for your visitor.
- Total Blocking Time (TBT): the total time during which a user cannot do anything on your page until all elements are loaded.
- Speed Index: this number shows how long a user waits until the full content of your page is visible.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): shows how long it takes for your page to display the largest element to your visitors. This could be a text block, but just as easily an image, slider, or video.
- Cumulative Layout Shift: the extent to which your page jumps around during loading. If this is at zero, your image stays exactly the same while elements are still loading (think of videos, images, or sliders).
Below these scores, you’ll find an overview of performance issues that are causing your page to load slower. We’d like to explain a few possible causes. These elements require quite a bit of technical knowledge. If you want to know more, read all about technical SEO.
Elements that slow down your website
User experience is an important part of your SEO strategy. Therefore, after analyzing your page speed, get to work on optimizing your website. Read our tips below and increase your pages’ load time.
Reduce image file size
Large images cause your page to load slower and make your users wait longer for relevant information. Don’t give them a chance to leave and place resized photos on your website. This keeps the dimensions and quality of your photo the same, but the file size is smaller, ensuring your load time is shorter.
Instead of a JPEG or PNG, choose a WebP image, a file type that is perfect for websites. For example: your image remains 10 by 5 centimeters, but the weight of your photo is significantly reduced.
Compress images
Loading images lowers your website’s page speed. Every KB (Kilobyte) counts when optimizing your website speed. Therefore, reduce the file size of your photo by using a tool like Imagify (more on this later). Make sure the dimensions of your image are not larger than the maximum display in pixels. This makes it take less time to appear on your page and improves your visitors’ user experience.
For example: if your website displays images on mobile and desktop at a pixel size of 300 by 300 pixels, make sure your photo is no larger than 300 by 300.
Browser caching
Store images, pieces of text, videos, or other elements in your browser’s cache. This way, you store data temporarily so that pages don’t have to reload all content every time. This allows your users to browse through your website more smoothly and quickly, improving their user experience.
Change server type
Every website uses a type of server. The higher the quality of your server, the higher the load speed of your pages. Better to choose a higher-quality server than a cheaper variant that is 1,000 kilometers away from your location.
In recent years, Apache was the standard server, but we prefer working with LiteSpeed servers that process PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) more efficiently and therefore load websites faster.
Use of redirects
Avoid redirects that send your user from pillar to post. Send your visitors immediately to the right page and remove links without added value from your website. Discover everything about how internal redirects work. And read our Screaming Frog guide to know how to tackle redirect issues and problems.
Limit your HTTP requests
A website consists of various elements, each of which is loaded one by one. Every font, every image, every video on your page is automatically an HTTP request. The more requests, the lower your website speed. Limit your HTTP requests by using only one type of font instead of five different ones. Compress your images, optimize your Javascript.
Minify CSS and Javascript files
Every website has a technical component combined with design, a CSS code. These letters and characters turn your page into a convincing and attractive image. The same goes for the use of Javascript. This scripting language makes your website interactive. For example, by showing a form where you as a user enter data that appears in real-time.
But both elements slow down your website’s load time. By, among other things, removing all unnecessary spaces in your code, you reduce the file size. This increases your page’s speed without changing the result.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN, a global network that delivers content to servers, is often seen as the ultimate solution for slow websites. If your website is connected to a CDN network, caching servers store your data on a global basis. If users from abroad visit your website, they will see your content faster.
But does your website only target national users? Then there’s no point in using an international server. In this case, the server sends your data to the other side of the world first before showing it on your user’s screen. An unnecessary intermediate step.
WordPress tools for page speed
When optimizing your SEO, focus on the load speed of your pages. Use these handy tools to analyze and improve your website’s page speed. Keep in mind, the more plugins your website has, the slower it loads.
WP Rocket
This plugin offers a number of automated functions such as file optimization, improving image load speed, and minifying CSS codes.
Go to the WP Rocket site. Create an account or log in with your existing details. Click ‘download WP Rocket’ at the bottom. Then click ‘Plugins’ in the left navigation and then the ‘Add Plugin button’.
Imagify
To reduce your images without changing their quality, use the Imagify plugin. Go to your website’s WordPress dashboard and log in.
Click ‘Plugins’ in the left navigation bar, search for the Imagify plugin, and add it. Set how large your images can be based on the number of pixels.
An example of website speed optimization
We’d like to show you the importance and impact of website speed using a concrete example. When we run an analysis in PageSpeed Insights, we see that this page’s speed only has a score of 47. Below this number, you’ll find the causes of the problem.
PageSpeed Insights reports that loading our YouTube video is causing a lot of delay. We solve this issue by deferring the visuals with lazy loading. This way, your page doesn’t load all at once. Users see essential and convincing information at the top, and your YouTube video only loads just before visitors scroll down.
With this small adjustment, your website speed increases significantly, from 47 to 60:
But it can be even better. By moving your YouTube video further down, it’s no longer above the fold. This is when lazy loading really kicks in. Users see all information above the fold immediately, without waiting for your video to load. Your website speed rises to 81.
Shall we go one step further? Instead of moving your video down, we replace it with another image that is above the fold. If you scroll down, it looks like there’s a YouTube video there. But in reality, we only show the first frame of the video here, and as a visitor, you have to click through to actually open and watch it. This adjustment makes our website speed go up even further, from 81 to 91.
By making a few small changes, you optimize your page significantly. Your visitors don’t have to wait unnecessarily for information and will happily stick around on your page longer.
Improve your load speed with Digital Climax
Visitors expect new and flashy content at a glance. If they have to blink a few times, your website is too slow, and they’ll drop off out of boredom. Even if your website is otherwise perfectly fine in terms of SEO. Avoid all elements that have a negative impact on your page speed. And give your users what they want, when they want it.
Was all this a bit fast for you? Would you rather bring in a team of experts? Then get in touch today; we’re ready for you.
