Page Speed For SEO : 11 Tips To Improve Page Loading Speed

by bestSEOtool in Search engine optimization

Speed Optimization is the most important part of a successful SEO strategy.

Website loading speed is the time it takes for a website to display its content. It is one of the most critical factors that can determine the success or failure of a website.

In today's fast-paced world, people have little patience, and they expect websites to load quickly. If a website takes too long to load, visitors are likely to leave and move on to a competitor's website.

In this article, we will discuss how site loading speed impacts website SEO and how to improve your site speed to boost your SEO performance.

Page Speed For SEO

Websites that surpass a certain speed limit tend to get a ranking boost in search engine result pages.

Google offers a tool called PageSpeed Insights to monitor page speed, which illustrates the importance of Site Speed as an important ranking factor.

Page speed is a direct ranking factor, confirmed by Google. However, page speed can have an indirect effect on rankings by increasing the bounce rate and decreasing dwell time.

All search engines such as Google and Bing, favor pages that offer a great user experience.

Page speed has a BIG impact on user experience. Visitors will find it easier to navigate your website if your pages load quickly.

All in all, if you want to succeed in SEO, you have to focus on page speed.

Core Web Vitals : Page Speed KPI

Core Web Vitals are a set of specific factors that Google suggests important in a webpage's overall user experience.

Core Web Vitals focus on three specific factors of a web page: loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.

Each of these three web vital factors provide insights on various elements that influence how users interact and engage with a website.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

LCP talks about the very first factor or the “loading performance” of the webpage.

This metric measures the amount of time it takes for the largest piece of content to load properly.

This could be an image, a video, text block, or any other content on the page.

First Input Delay (FID)

FID covers the “interactivity” factor of core web vitals. This is sometimes called Input Latency or Input Lag.

This factor measures the amount of time it takes for a user to interact with your page. How long it takes for the web page to respond to the first interaction.

This could be as simple as clicking a button.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

CLS measures how stable a page is as it loads. It is the "visual stability” factor of Core Web Vitals.

For example, if elements on your page move around when the page loads, you have a high CLS. That’s a bad thing that can harm your SEO performance.

For each of these metrics, Google defined three categories: Good, Need Improvement, and Poor.

For example, a page with a First Input Delay (FID) below 300ms is considered poor.

The metrics are divided into two reporting types: Desktop Performance and Mobile Performance.

Desktop signals are used for desktop rankings, while mobile signals are used for mobile search rankings.

The Core Web Vitals are a subset of a wider set of UX quality signals known as Web Vitals. This list is constantly being updated and includes additional relevant metrics such as TTFB and FCP.

How To Improve Page Loading Speed

Here are some effective ways to improve your page loading speed:

1. Compress Images

Large images are one of the main reasons for a slow loading web page.

They consume a big portion of your page's size.

You might have a low LCP score if your page has large images.

Using tools like TinyPNG, you can easily optimize images by compressing them without compromising their quality.

2. Optimize Your Code

You can significantly speed up your page by following code optimization strategies like removing unnecessary spaces, commas, formatting, unused code, and bad comments.

Large CSS and JavaScript files can slow down a website's loading speed.

To improve website loading speed, you need to reduce the size of CSS and JavaScript files by minifying them.

The better your code, the faster it will load.

3. Activate Browser Caching

Caching is one of the most useful techniques for speeding up your web page. Caching saves copies of your website's files, reducing the level of work required by the server to produce and serve a web page to a visitor's browser.

Browser caching allows web browsers to temporarily store data such as JavaScript files, stylesheets, and images.

Browser caching can reduce page loading time by making pages load faster on revisits.

You can enable browser caching into your.htaccess file. Or you can use a WordPress plugin like WP Rocket.

4. Leverage CDN

Implementing Content Delivery Network (CDN) is one of the simplest ways to improve your page loading speed.

CDNs work by identifying your visitor's physical location and then serving your site's contents from a server nearby them.

For example, suppose your server is in New Zealand but you have a lot of visitors from India. Instead of sending files from New Zealand, the CDN can send them from an Indian server, which makes the method faster and more efficient.

5. Minimize HTTP Requests

The number of HTTP requests a website makes impacts its loading speed. You can minimize HTTP requests by combining multiple CSS and JavaScript files into one file. Additionally, avoid using too many external resources, such as fonts or third-party scripts.

6. Enable Gzip Compression

Gzip compression compresses website files, reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent from the server to the user's browser. This can significantly reduce website loading time.

7. Enable Lazy Loading

Lazy loading is a speed optimization technique that loads images and other resources only when a user scrolls down to view them.

This can significantly improve your page speed.

8. Reduce Font Variety

Even though different fonts can make your website stand out, they can have a negative effect on performance, especially if they're uncommon or require special character sets.

To maximize page speed, always focus on a limited number of fonts and use fast-loading fonts like OpenSans.

9. Reduce Redirects

Excessive redirects on your website can badly harm your page loading speed.

Each redirect generates additional HTTP requests, which requires additional processing time.

Of course, redirects may be required in some cases, such as when switching to a new domain.

However, to keep your webpages as fast as possible, think about using only the important ones.

You can use a tool like Screaming Frog to figure out all the redirects on your site as well as where they lead.

This should help you to identify unnecessary redirects that aren't meaningful or valuable to your site.

10. Reduce Third-Party Scripts

Third-party scripts enhance your website with a variety of useful features, making it more appealing and engaging to users.

However, Third-party scripts are one of the main reasons for a slow page loading time. They are typically the most expensive resource during page load. Some of these scripts may also be dangerous to your site security.

Always remember to keep only the most important ones to speed up your page loading time.

11. Choose Reliable Hosting

Hosting services are critical to the performance of your website because they provide the server on which your site is hosted. As a result, the performance of their servers has a direct impact on the performance of your website.

By choosing a reputable hosting provider, you know your web server can process requests quickly enough to handle any operations on your site.

FAQs

Q. What is a Good Page Speed for SEO?

According to Google, a good page speed for SEO is 3 seconds or less. When load speeds are fast, visitors are more likely to stick around.

Q. How do I speed up my website?

You can quickly speed up your website to achieve high search engine rankings by using all of the above-mentioned speed optimization strategies.

Q. How often should I check the website page speed?

You should test page loading speed at least once a week or after making changes to your website. This includes publishing updated content or implementing speed optimization strategies.

Q. The best tools to measure page loading speed?

To assess page loading time, there are lots of page speed test tools available, such as Google PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix. You can also use our 100% free pagespeed checker tool to measure your page loading speed as well as getting tailored recommendations to improve your SEO performance.