There is no doubt that Page Speed is important when you have a website, It is very important to know how to optimize page speed as a website owner; a fast site helps you rank higher in search results such as Google, Yahoo and Bing’s search, it drives traffic and improves your visitors overall experience. Your visitors are happier when they don’t have to sit around waiting for your website to load.
So you know having a fast website is important, but how to optimize page speed and speed up your website loading? It’s actually not as complex as you might think. Let’s go over 6 simple tips you can do to improve the speed of your site.
6 Tips on How to Optimize Page Speed
1. Clutter Control
First, clean it up, a website is just like anything else, it works a lot wells when it’s organized and not slowed down by clutter, so get rid of spam and old files that you’re not using anymore, delete unused plugins and themes and key point is a must do all this on a regular basis, getting rid of digital clutter, makes it easier for your server to keep your website optimize and running fast.
2. Regular Updates
Second, keep your plugins and themes updated and the website version itself. This keeps your site secure, more efficient and improves stability too, but before installing a new theme or plugin, make sure you do some research, for example:
- How many times has it been downloaded?
- Are people leaving good reviews?
- Has a new version been released lately?
This kind of questions help identify resources that are likely to help your website and not hurt it.
3. Caching
Third, let’s talk about caching. Caching is the process by which certain files of a website are stored within a visitor’s browser for future use. That way, visitor’s browser doesn’t have to re-download the files from scratch every time they visit, you can install a plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket, that will help with this process. Apart from using plugin, I would also recommend leverage on CDN (Content Delivery Network) service such as CloudFlare. The right plugin will also define what files should and should not be cached, thus delivering your content faster to returning visitors.
4. Embed Media
Fourth, embed media from other sources. Most web servers are not designed to store and deliver media to visitors. Doing so just slows your website down and leaves users frustrated, so instead upload the video, music or pictures into your web server, you may use to services designed for that purpose, for example, upload videos to YouTube and then use the embed or iframe HTML tag to embed them within your page, it looks just as if you uploaded the video right to your site, except it loads a lot fast and it is optimized for playback. While audio, you could use a service such as SoundCloud and for photos, you could use services like Flickr or something similar.
5. Compression
Fifth, Now there may be instances where you’ll want to upload photos directly to your website, but images can be a major trigger for slowing it down on loading, which leads us to point number five. When you need to host media directly on your website, make sure to compress it first, example for audio only upload compressed files, such as MP3 and for images, not only should you compress them but also make sure to specify their dimensions.
Here is why when a visitor comes to your website, their browser has to determine how to display your content. If you haven’t already specified the size of your images, the browser has to calculate it itself, which takes time, so help speed up the process by providing the proper dimensions will help the browser load faster. Great media can make a website vibrant and engaging, but don’t let it be the reason your traffic leaves.
6. Choosing the right Web Hosting Service Provider
Six, our last tip on how to optimize page speed. For maintaining a speedy site is choosing the right hosting solution. This is a big issue that usually webmaster face. you can do everything right, but if the server hosting your website is under power, your page speed will still suffer, so make sure to select a hosting service that not only provides plenty of resources like CPU and RAM, but lets you easily scale, add more resources when your traffic increases. Your host should also provide the flexibility to upgrade to more powerful platforms as you grow!
Example company like Bluehost, they allow you to do all these things such as scaling resources and upgrading your account literally takes just two clicks. Bluehost offer VPS hosting, dedicated server and cloud solutions, so you can select the platform that provides just the right amount of power to guarantee your website delivers fast.
If you have questions or want to learn more about the six tips on how to optimize page speed I have just covered, get in touch with me at @FollowCalvyn. I am a Digital Marketing Trainer who can answer your questions, or even do all of this optimization for you. Do not hesitate to contact me and I will get your website up to speed fast.
