Site Speed Optimization
The main problem with SEO is that it’s a game of cat and mouse. There are constantly new changes to Google’s algorithm, which means you have to constantly be on your toes. But there are also other, more practical problems with SEO, such as how to optimize your site for speed. Here’s a quick overview of what you need to know about site speed optimization.
Site Speed Optimization
Your page load speed is a Google ranking factor. Try to keep your page load in under 2 seconds. It includes all resources used by your web page, including those loaded from 3rd party domains like Google Analytics.
Let’s talk about how to optimize your site speed.
Use CDN
A content delivery network (CDN) is a system of distributed servers (network) that deliver pages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage, and the content delivery server.
Probably the most popular and free one is Cloudflare.
Cloudflare allows you to serve static resources of your site from their CDN for free. Their network is robust and well organized, with many edge servers worldwide. Cloudflare also provides you with a free SSL certificate, so you don’t have to care about it.
Optimize Images
Almost all website contains images. Images and videos are usually the most extensive resources used on your web pages.
To make your site load faster, you have to optimize them. It means you have to use proper resources for specific needs. Here is how:
For photos and images, use JPEG format.
The JPEG format is a lossy compression format for digital images. It is commonly used for storing and transmitting photos and other images on the web. JPEG files are typically much smaller than other image file formats, such as TIFF or PNG.
For images that use fewer colors or require transparency, use PNG format.
The PNG format is a lossless compression format for images. This means that the image quality is not reduced when the image is compressed.
For icons, use SVG format.
The SVG format is a vector graphic format widely used on the web. The most significant advantage is that it is small, and you can scale it up and down without using the image quality.
For image optimization, you can use desktop software like ImageOptim or JPEGmini. If you’re running your site on WordPress, you can use many plugins like TinyPNG.
Minimize and reduce the number of Javascript and CSS files.
If your website has a lot of JavaScript and CSS files, it can slow down its performance. Try to group all JavaScript into one and do so with all CSS files. It will reduce the overall number of HTTP requests. There are a lot of tools to minify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files quickly. If you’re using Webpack or other bundlers, they’ll take care of this step.
Use website caching
If many users are accessing a page simultaneously, it can slow down servers, and they may take longer to deliver the web page to each user.
Caching is a way of storing the current version of your website on the server and presenting this version until your website is updated. It means that the web page doesn’t need to be rendered repeatedly for each user.
Cached web pages don’t need to send database requests each time they are accessed.
Using WordPress, you can use plugins like W3 Total Cache or W3 Super Cache.
Prefetching techniques
Prefetching, also known as DNS prefetching, is a process that can help reduce the latency associated with DNS resolution. By resolving a site’s IP address before a visitor clicks its link, prefetching can enhance your site’s user experience (UX).
On the other side, there is link prefetching and content prerendering when the entire page gets preloaded in the background. Let’s talk about this a bit.
You need to consider this…
People have recently used all the fancy technologies to run their sites like NextJS. Gatsby and NuxtJS. All of them are optimized for fast load. Here is the “but!”
There are factors people do not consider when using these static site generators. If your bounce rate is high (like 80%). It means that almost all users visit just one page. Read it and then leave.
Both NextJS and NuxtJs use Javascript extensively to “preload” other pages. So every user will load tons of unnecessary code. It is why I mostly suggest using static site generators like Astro.
Astro reduces the excessive number of javascript code and allows you to use your preferred Javascript framework like React, VueJs, or Svelte to create page components.
You’ll be surprised with the Page Speed Score you’ll get in Google Page Insights.
