You gotta be fast! How to improve your website loading speed?

It takes approx. 5 minutes to read this article

Search engine optimization is key to increasing traffic to your website and encouraging users to stay on your site longer and visit more pages. But there’s no sense in optimizing your site if it takes too long to load. Poor performance and slow load times not only affect your visitor’s experience but can also negatively impact your search rankings on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. What can you do about that?

The value of site performance

These are all user experiences when using a given website, including their impressions and emotions. UX is one of Google’s highest priorities. Because of this, we introduce new updates and new algorithms into the network to make the website even better. The lower the bounce rate is, the better. This contributes to a positive conversion.

What is page load time?

Page load time is one of the key metrics considered in SEO when it comes to speed optimization. Page load time refers to the time it takes for a web page to fully load all resources, such as images and media. The lower your page’s loading time, the higher your website will rank on Google. When looking at average response times, visitors can get impatient and leave a site that takes more than three seconds to load. Site performance and user experience are incredibly important in today’s competitive digital environment. Pages that take too long to load can lead to low levels of engagement, high bounce rates, and poor SEO results.

Auditing your site for issues

You probably want to get to work right away? Great, but ironically slow it down. First, the audit is the absolute basis of your activities. An audit is an independent, objective assessment of the quality of your website, including its speed. Of course, you can do it yourself or use free online services. However, they are not personalized and the result will be unreliable. So use the help of a professional SEO agency Hamilton, which, thanks to the competence of specialists, will tell you what exactly should be done.

How can page load time be improved?

Introduction to Core Web Vitals

Basic internet indicators describe the convenience of using a given website. Additionally, they evaluate the health of the entire site. Remember, however, that they are one of the elements of your checklist. They are related to the speed of loading, but also to the experience of recipients. So let’s take advantage of their flexibility.

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

This indicator determines the loading time of the largest element on the page. It can be a photo, illustration, video, animation, or even a massive block of text. The research is clear: if the page loads for more than 3 seconds, 1/3 of the recipients will abandon it in favor of the competition. As it is easy to count, in the case of the e-commerce industry this is a loss of 33% of customers. Your speed should be a maximum of 2.5 seconds. Each result above needs improvement. How to do it?

 

Tip 1: Upgrade to faster hosting.

Tip 2: Implement critical CSS.

Tip 3: Optimize and convert your images.

FID (First Input Delay)

This size tells us the speed of interactivity and responsiveness of the website. It is the time it takes for your website to load until it is fully clickable for users. This delay can be quite a problem in the case of buttons that generate commands. A smoothly running website has a positive effect on UX. In this case, the result should be a maximum of 100 milliseconds. What if it is more?

 

Tip 1: stop long tasks and break them down into smaller ones.

Tip 2: Compress the code file.

Tip 3: Optimize your CSS.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

The last of the basic metrics is the stability of your site’s elements as it loads. It measures the number of consecutive shifts in the page appearance that result from different loading times. The user then jumps on the page and cannot navigate freely on it. Finally, the result should be 0.1. To correct it:

 

Tip 1: Avoid advertising or reserve a special spot for them.

Tip 2: Add an attribute with media width and height.

Tip 3: Optimize your font delivery.

Monitor and analyze

Monitoring website loading speed and tracking information on your core web vitals like time-on-site, bounce rate, and conversion rates are the most important things you can do. The website should also load quickly or else it will affect conversions, as well. The indicators provide us with an estimate of the impressions our users receive. Google acknowledges that these elements impact positioning. When you improve your results for good, you will be able to reduce your bounce rate, increase conversions, and improve your ranking in search results.

Wrapping up

As a content creator, it is your responsibility to deliver compelling and engaging content that doesn’t sacrifice speed for the sake of quality. With these tips, you’ll be able to save on hosting costs, provide a better experience for your visitors, and increase SEO rankings. Best New Zealand SEO.

(fot. pexels.com)

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