Slow sites gets penalised Slow sites get severely penalised in Google’s search results. It’s that simple and that terrible: Slow Equals Low! Compounding the problem is the fact that if your website is still loading after five seconds, up to 20% of visitors will leave you for every extra second it takes to load. (Source: Google Research). So if you need better search results: One of the first actions you should take is to make sure that you test your speed. Read and implement this advice. The team at Boylen has created a list of the eight key actions you should prioritise in order to improve how fast your site loads for visitors. One: Optimise Images For Faster Loading, Without Compromising Quality Use PNG image file format since its best compressed for the web with just 16 fewer colours than its JPEG counterpart, which is generally has a larger file size. You can also use CSS sprites to create a template for images that are frequently used on your website such as icons and buttons. It basically combines these images to load at once instead of fragmented batches. This means that your are saving load time by not having the server to load every single image. Two: Utilise Content Distribution Networks CDNs or content distribution networks are mainly used to store copies of your site that are located at multiple, geographically diverse data centres so that once a user loads your site from a specific location, the nearest data center will be responsible for “serving” your website to achieve for faster load times. Three: Improve Server Response Time Server response time is highly correlated with the amount of traffic you receive, the specifications of the server your site is hosted on, types of resources and content on each page, and the hosting solution you use. To improve server response time, look for network errors and performance issues on the server logs, such as slow database queries, memory shortage or slow routing bottlenecks. Then fix them! In general, optimal server response time is below 200ms. Four: Browser Caching Helps Every time a user visits your website, the server loads up all the images, content and files. By enabling browser caching, browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page each time a visitor comes back to your website. The result is that site load time is much faster. Tools like GTmetrix can help identify caching issues and optimize settings. Five: Redirects Affect Your Site Speed It’s good practice to redirect old, outdated or retired pages to new versions using 301 redirects. However, if it is not necessary either for Google and your site visitors, avoid redirects because users face additional waiting time for the HTTP-request cycle to finish. Unnecessary redirects make your page slower. Six: Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScript Google recommends UglifyJS and CSSNano to optimise your website code. It can help you gain precious speed by automatically removing unnecessary spaces, commas and other characters and unused code. Seven: Enable Compression A popular software application for file compression is Gzip. It reduces the total size of your site’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes. For images, however, use a program like Photoshop where you can control the quality of images. Now What? Do you want more traffic? Better conversions? Contact Us today and we can start the conversation. We enjoy improving websites and think you will too. Table of ContentsSlow sites gets penalisedOne: Optimise Images For Faster Loading, Without Compromising QualityTwo: Utilise Content Distribution NetworksThree: Improve Server Response TimeFour: Browser Caching HelpsFive: Redirects Affect Your Site SpeedSix: Minify HTML, CSS and JavaScriptSeven: Enable CompressionNow What? Related Posts How Google My Business Can Help Local Businesses Thrive The benefits of embedding socials into website design Marketing in a crowded market