Conversion not every time means sales, it could have different meanings depending upon what a company wants. But it is true that conversion is what everyone wants and for what all efforts are made. Adopting effective SEO strategies are important in ensuring good conversion rates. Even missing a single point might negatively impact your site.
Have you ever experienced that even after doing everything right according to good SEO practices or white hat SEO, you are not getting enough conversion? Most of you might have faced this situation and felt clueless. The reason for this condition would be a slow loading website and not many focuses on this part, they don’t even think website speed a part of SEO. But it is important to know that the speed of the website should also be considered during search engine optimization.
Why speed up your website?
People have a scarcity of time these days and they don’t want to wait for the things to get done. If you own a website that is slow to load, you will not get traffic. People get irritated too fast and they will not wait for your site to load completely. In the end, all you’ll get is a high bounce rate which results in low SERP ranking.
When people are not staying up to view your web page then having optimized, unique, and well-researched content is a waste. Similarly, what’s the purpose of link building then and what will be the role of social media marketing? If your site takes time to load completely then all the rest of your efforts will go in vain. Thus, it is important to have a faster website so that people can quickly see the content after landing.
You might know or might not know that your SEO score will become low due to the slow loading of pages and people will start losing interest. If we say in simpler terms, more will be the website loading speed, more are the chances of getting conversions.
How you can increase page loading speed?
It is very necessary to have a speedy website not only to improve its reputation but also to reduce the bounce rate and make people stay. Here are the several factors by which you can improve the page loading speed of your website:
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Reduce HTTP requests
There are many elements on a web page which includes images, videos, scripts, and much more. For each element, an HTTP request is made which consumes time and results in increased page loading time. Thus, it is important to know how many HTTP requests have been made by your page. Analyze each of the files and see if they are important. Removes the ones that are not required and you’ll see a significant increase in the page loading speed of your website.
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Avoid shared web hosting
We know that sharing is caring but this is not the case when it comes to web hosting. There are many web hosting providers who try to fit in as many websites as they can into a server. This creates extra load on the server and all the visitors of websites having shared web hosting will experience slow page loading. It is always good to choose web hosting that can satisfy your customers as well as a search engine to improve SERP rankings.
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Combine files
As we’ve seen that reducing HTTP requests is of great help in improving the speed of the website and we can do that by eliminating unnecessary ones. But the main problem lies when you have got only important files and still you are not able to achieve good speed. In this situation, the best strategy is to minify and combine files. This will result in reducing file size and their numbers as well. Consider this for JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files, as they are of very high importance.
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The trailing slash
There are a number of simple but key factors that have a great impact on the loading speed of a web page. One of those important factors is ‘trailing slash’. It is a forward slash (/) that is placed at the end of a URL. If trailing slash is not present at the end of the URL then the server will consider it as a file and look for it. If the server is not able to find that file, then it will be treated as a directory and search for it will begin accordingly. This whole process will take more than usual time and what visitors will experience is a slow website. For example, https://abc.com and https://abc.com/, in the first case there is no trailing slash and it will load slowly when compared to the second example with a trailing slash.
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Asynchronous loading of CSS and JavaScript files
Another way by which you can increase your website’s speed is by allowing CSS & JavaScript files to load asynchronously. This means that scripts will load simultaneously and visitors will see the elements quickly after landing on the page. While, if you have synchronous loading activated, visitors will experience slow loading as files will appear one by one based on the order they are placed on the web page
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Deferring JavaScript
Letting smallr files to load first could be of great help in the process of increasing the speed of the website. This can be done by deferring larger files like JavaScript and allowing other content to load first. Doing this might help improve page loading speed and ensure a better conversion rate in the long run.
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Let browser caching do your work
Caches play an important role in improving the speed of your website and giving a better experience to the visitors of your site. Turning browser caching on lets the browser save elements of your website and when a visitor lands on your site the next time there won’t be the requirement sending an HTTP request to the server for saved elements. Hence, the web page will load faster.
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Consider time to first byte (TTFB)
TTFB is defined as the time taken by a web browser to receive the first byte from the server. Lower the time high will be the speed of loading web page. Good TTFB time recommended by Google is 200ms and one should aim for that. The reason for slow TTFB could be:
- High web traffic
- Network problem
- Dynamic content creation
- Web server configuration
You have no control over the first two points but you can consider the next two to improve the time to the first byte.
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Server response time
Another way by which you can improve the speed of your website is by reducing the server response time. This could be done by choosing a top web hosting provider and using it as efficiently as you can by learning new techniques. Here are the four key factors that are responsible for managing server response time:
- Web traffic
- Website resource usage
- Web server software
- Web hosting
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File compression
We know that smaller will be the files faster they will load. But in order to make files small, we cannot compromise their quality. Thus, it is important to find relevant ways by which you can compress the files without sacrificing their quality and it will surely come in handy. GZIP compression is considered to be the best for reducing file size and improving the page loading speed of your website. It is known to work well for HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Try this and see what difference it can make.
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Optimize media files
Web pages with videos and images have high chances of loading slowly and will directly impact the traffic on your site. The reason for this is that media files are heavy and take more time to load. But we also know what role do they play in improving the quality and reputation of a website, thus, we cannot completely remove them either. So, in such a scenario, it is necessary to reduce their size but keeping the quality in mind. Consider file format smartly so that the web page loads faster on both websites as well as mobile. For this, you can take the help of dedicated tools for file compression that are available in the market.
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CDN is there for the rescue
It’s not only the server that can help you out in increasing the speed of your website, using other networks work as well. If you are experiencing high web traffic and it is becoming difficult for your hosting provider to handle, you can use a content delivery network (CDN). A CDN is defined as a group of servers that can help improve web page loading speed and enhance the performance of your website. A CDN has also shown to provide protection against some of the common malicious attacks.
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External hosting platforms
This point is of importance especially for those who want to upload videos on their website. A video file is very heavy and it will take lots of space. Now imagine having your site on a shared server, all you will get is limited space and if you use that for a video, your website will become too slow. In such situations, smartness lies in taking the help of an external hosting platform like YouTube for hosting the video and later embed it on your website. This will save the space on the server and ensure faster loading time.
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CSS delivery optimization
CSS is responsible for stylizing your web page and when it is opened, CSS information could be accessed in one of the two ways:
- An external file which is loaded before your page does
- An inline file which is there in the HTML
To improve page loading speed, it is advised to use one external CSS stylesheet as more stylesheets mean more HTTP requests. If it is not feasible to keep only one external file, you can try combining them. For CSS optimization, you can also insert small external CSS resources into HTML documents but avoid doing this for large files.
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Above the fold content
While visiting a website, a user does not see the whole web page at once. To see the entire page, the user has to scroll it down. The part which is visible to the user after landing on a page is known as above the fold content. So, you can prioritize this content to load faster than the rest. This helps in improving the experience of users coming on to your website and they don’t have to wait for the matter to load. This strategy is known as ‘lazy loading.’ For example, if an e-commerce site has a total number of 50 products to show, in normal circumstances it requires loading all the 50 product images before displaying them on the screen. But this is not the case when you use lazy loading as the images in view zone will load first and rest ones later.
In this manner, the user will see all the elements quicker and it will have a positive impact on your website.
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The dark side of plugins
If you have a WordPress site, then installing appropriate plugins can have a huge impact on improving the performance of your website. They remove away the hassle of tedious coding to some extent and makes your work easier. But it is also true that having large numbers of plugins unnecessary on your site can downgrade its speed and visitors will start becoming annoyed. Thus, it is important to run a plugin audit on your website and remove the unnecessary ones to improve the loading speed of the website.
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Redirects
Redirects play an important role for the pages you’ve moved or deleted so that no visitor goes unsatisfied. But it is also important to know that having too many redirects results in extra HTTP requests and causes your website to load slow. Thus, site owners must consider this seriously and remove as many redirects as they could to improve its loading speed.
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External script
Reducing external scripts has also seen a significant increase in page loading speed of your website. Using third-party integrations, several tools, and even integrating your website with social media platforms like Twitter can also add external scripts that increase HTTP requests made by your site. Thus, it is necessary to identify external scripts and remove the ones are that not required.
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Check the mobile page loading speed
You don’t have to only focus on the traffic coming from PC, as a large number of people use mobile phones for internet surfing and your website must be optimized for them as well. For that, you must monitor how fast your web page loads on mobile. If you find out that your site is loading slowly on the mobile phone, then you must take appropriate measures to improve the speed. Don’t forget that most of the visitors come from mobile devices.
The Bottom Line
After reading this blog, you might have got an idea of how a slow loading website can impact the conversion rate and your business. Everyone is busy these days and no one will waste time waiting while the page of your site is loading. There are lots of options in the market and people will quickly move to the next option if you are unable to satisfy their needs.
Online presence has become a must and most important for businesses and visitors can predict the quality of your service by just having a look at your website. So, it won’t be wrong to say that your website will create a first impression, hence it should be user-friendly in nature. But, only after watching the design & content of your website people will be able to identify how well you are in your niche. For that, it is important for your site to load fast without much waiting time. (https://casadelninobilingual.com/)
These above-mentioned are some of the parameters that can help you improve the page loading speed of your website. Consider them smartly and try adopting the relevant one based on the condition of the website. Good site speed is a must and you should take it seriously. If you are still confused, then it is advised to consult a professional like Ranksoldier.
Closely monitor the performance of your website, test its speed, and then strategize what is wrong and how you can get it corrected. We hope the information provided above will help you with this.