Google has indicated site speed (and as a result, page speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. And research has shown that Google might be specifically measuring time to first byte as when it considers page speed. In addition, a slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation. Over time, Google has taken action to improve the loading speed of websites by providing a set of tools for developers and webmasters.
Unfortunately, most websites perform poorly when it comes to page speed, and that has a direct negative impact on their revenue.
In this article, we’ll be sharing with you how to improve the loading speed of your website and webpages which will eventually help your SEO performance.
- Improve your Server Response Time
Server response time (SRT) is the amount of time it takes for the web browser to receive a response. Basically, when you access a page, it sends a message to the server and the time it takes to show you that information is considered to be the server response time.
Many times, the reason why a website loads slow is the server itself. Choosing the right server can be difficult because of pricing especially for small to medium businesses. The best way to address this concern is to partner up with an SEO company who can address your server and SEO needs altogether.
- Optimize & Reduce Image Size Without Affecting the Visual Appearance
If a website is loading really slow, one of the first things that come to mind are images. Why? Because they’re big. And we’re not talking in size on screen but in size on disk. Images and videos also download a lot of bytes on a page, which makes your SRT longer. If the page is optimized correctly, your server will perform faster by downloading fewer bytes which will have a positive impact on your SEO performance.
There are a lot of ways on how you can optimize and reduce the sizes of your images and videos but once you get an SEO company who can support you, it will just be easier for you.
- Set a Browser Cache Policy
Browser caching involves a visitor’s browser downloading your website’s resources, (e.g., HTML files, JavaScript files and images) to their local drive. This speeds up page load times during subsequent visits and reduces bandwidth usage. Policies include how a resource is cached, where it’s cached and its maximum age before expiring.
The best way to significantly improve the page speed load is to leverage the browser cache and set it according to your needs. Using a cache will also make changes harder to spot. If you make a change to your website, open an Incognito tab to see the changes and go to the plugin settings from time to time to reset the cache.
Aside from the three different ways we just provided on how you can improve on your website and webpage speed, there are still a lot of other technical works that need deeper understanding of SEO and some web development. If you are unsure on how to go about these changes, it is safe to get in touch with SEO support companies. One of the most trusted SEO support companies in Sydney is CMSIT. Aside from providing you with our SEO services, we can also help you with your server concerns and more. If you are interested to learn more, you can visit our Contact Us page.
