In this article, we will cover different ways to increase website loading speed in 2024. We are going to discuss how can we test our blog speed and what measures we can take to increase blog speed.
Increase Website Loading Speed in 2024
The Correlation between Site Speed And Rankings
Whenever we searched for something on Google, and then clicked the result, we had to wait until the page was loaded. Everybody has gone through this process. But if a website is taking a lifetime to load its page, we just click the back button and go for another result.
Google has a similar view on the page speed of a website. Google doesn’t want slow-loading websites to rank as they are giving a poor user experience. If the users had to wait for a longer time to see the results, then the traffic on Google slowly reduce resulting in the rise of another search engine which is very bad for Google.
That’s why Google prefers websites that have great user experience and less load time. Now site speed has become an important factor since 2010. Google has also confirmed this in a webmaster central blog. The general view is that a website should load within 3 seconds. If a website takes longer to load more than 3 seconds, then it can hurt website rankings. That’s why page speed is super important for a website to rank higher.
How to Test the Website Speed?
Now, we know that a website that loads in less than 3 seconds will rank higher. To check our website speed, we can use a tool called GTMetrix. You can also use the Google Lighthouse Chrome plugin in your browser to find out the website’s performance.
Web Hosting and Servers
When it comes to website speed, website hosting, and server location are very crucial. Suppose you are living in the UK and started a blog targeting an audience from the United States. As you live in the UK and you keep the server location in the UK, it will take forever to load your website in the USA.
So, whatever blog you start targeting any country, You need to keep in mind during buying web hosting whether your web hosting provider has server locations in that particular country or not.
How to increase the website speed?
We already know that page speed is very important for website rankings. We are going to share some insights on this. If a website loads with a 1-second delay, it results in
- 11% fewer page views.
- 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.
- 7% loss in conversions.
So, how can we increase the speed of our website?
Reduce Image Sizes
We need to use images in our blog posts to increase engagement. Researchers have found that adding colored visuals makes people 80% more likely to read the content on the website. But if those images aren’t optimized, then it would hurt the website than helping. Non-optimized images are one of the most common issues we see that affect page speed.
Reduce HTTP Requests
HTTP stands for hypertext transfer protocol. Whenever we hit a url on the browser, the browsers requests for html, css, javascript, images,etc files through HTTP request. If you have lot of files to request for server from browser, then it may take sometime to fetch the data from the backend server.
We can add plugins like lazy load to make calls on request when it is needed.
Minimize Source Files
Any website will serves on browser through HTML, CSS and Javascript. All the functionalities and designs of our website are done on Javascript and CSS files. If we can optimize these files by minimizing or obfuscating them before they serve on browser, It would save ample amount of load time.
We can minimize these files manually through free web applications or there will be plugins if you are using wordpress which minimizes the source files before the webpage serves on browser.
Caching the Files
If any user visits our website for the first time, the user’s browser requests for the source files directly from the server. Once the browser receives the files, the web page will serve on browser.
Fetching the files everytime whenever the user hits our URL in browser will be expensive. If we use cache plugins in our website, then the user’s browser will store the necessary files when the user visit website for the first time and when the user visits for second time. The web page will get loaded from the already cached files which will reduce the load time for the web page and it will give good user experience.
These some of the best ways to increase website loading speed which will help our website to rank higher in Google search results.