How To Improve Your Website Speed by Maria Smith. Available from <https://www.techmalak.com/how-to-improve-your-website-speed/#.WMeFbjuGPDc> [March 08, 2017
When you open any web page on the Internet, whether it is your e-mail, a search system or a social network, your browser spends some time, usually seconds, to load all the components of the website: images, text, video, and other content. The time devoted to loading all these elements is called the load speed of the web page.
Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines tend to give users the quickest and the most relevant results. Fast websites increase user satisfaction, improve the overall Internet quality, especially for people with slow Internet connection and, of course, influence the reputation, status, and rating of all well-known search systems. Thus, Google levels the websites down in the search engine results if the web page load speed is low. Some search engines recommend that you choose a quality hosting for websites and consider the access speed and failure time.
The recommendation is to use hosting services which offer the best speeds with an excellent track record of uptime.
Loading speeds have a direct effect on your website traffic and SEO ranking. You should pay attention to any fluctuations in search engine results because they may potentially signal problems with your site loading.
It is always a great idea to Monitor the statistics, webpage parameters, by using tools and tests to keep your finger on the pulse of your site performance. You can use load speed testing programs as the Pingdom Website Speed Test and Google PageSpeed Insights.
Pingdom carries out detailed tests of a website’s loading time, and analyzes it according to multiple parameters finding existing problems in its performance.
Google presents the test results in the form of a scale where the loading speed is measured within 0 – 100 points. The higher this mark is, the faster a website loads.
It’s practically impossible to achieve the result of 100 points, but a good quality site should be rated not less than 80 points according to the PageSpeed Insights scale. Both testing systems provide accurate and individual recommendations along with detailed descriptions on how to increase a website’s loading speed.
To optimize the webpage load speed, it is necessary to reduce the number of HTTP requests to the web server and make it easier for a browser to view HTML pages received in response to these requests. Here are some tips on how to improve the loading speed, performance and productivity of your website:
- Graphics and images. The main reason why your web pages load for a long time is “heavy” visual elements and pictures as well as a large amount of them. It’s essential to analyze and make changes in graphics on every promoted page.
- Scripts. A browser “reads” the page from top to bottom. When it sees the scripts, it takes time to process each of them. Only after processing the JavaScript code a browser continues “reading” the webpage. You should optimize all scripts for better website loading speed and performance.
- The Volume of HTML and CSS code. This factor significantly affects the load speed, so the code volume should be minimized as much as possible. This will only benefit you in your website promotion and its management. It will also allow you to include more useful textual information into the code.
- The Position of CSS files. By placing the CSS files to the header, you will get a gradual webpage rendering. A page will load gradually – first the header, then the logo at the top, the navigation, etc. This, in its turn, is an excellent indicator for a user that the content is loading, so it makes a good overall impression of the website. If the CSS files are placed at the bottom of the webpage browsers are not allowed to render it gradually. So you should connect all the CSS files to the top of the page in the head section.
- The position of JavaScript. By placing the JavaScript files to the bottom of your web page, you allow a browser to load the page with the content first and only after that to start loading the JavaScript files. If your website is up to date and contains all possible interactive features, there can be several JavaScripts. They can be a few hundred kilobytes. So place all your JavaScript files at the end of the web page just not to make a user wait until they are loaded.
These are some of the fundamental reasons which can make your website load slow or fast. A fast loading speed is imperative as it improves the user experience, increases the conversion rate and user involvement.
It also raises a website in the search engine results, and is especially important when it comes to mobile traffic. After all, no one wants to go to a web page from a smartphone and wait for ages until the content loads. So take care of your website load speed and performance to improve your sales and position in the search optimization listings.
How To Improve Your Website Speed by Maria Smith. Available from <https://www.techmalak.com/how-to-improve-your-website-speed/#.WMeFbjuGPDc> [March 08, 2017