Google rewards fast websites

First, it launched the PageSpeed tool to help developers improve site performance, followed by the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to boost speed on mobile sites.

Soon after, it launched another tool called Think with Google to help gauge how responsive (or mobile-friendly) a site is, which includes speed as a parameter.

Clearly, Google wants your website to load faster than it is right now. Including site speed in your SEO campaign is a must. But how speedy?

How fast should my website be?

Unfortunately, the exact definition of “site speed” is open to speculation. According to the surveys, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less. If the site fails to launch in 3 seconds, there is a good chance they’ll abandon it.

You should work on your site’s speed not only to work your way up Google’s rankings but also to increase conversions. This should be a key question to ask when using an SEO company.

For instance, one survey found that nearly 79% of web shoppers who have trouble with website performance won’t return to the site to buy again.

Simple ways to improve your site speed

How to improve site speed is a pretty big topic,  so here are a few ways how our SEO company in Norwich improves page load times.

Save file space

  • Optimizing Images – these are usually the largest components on any site (in terms of file size). By compressing them, you can often cut down page size by 30-40%.
  • Browser Caching – is the mechanism for temporarily storing web data such as HTML pages and images in order to reduce bandwidth usage.

If your using WordPress (what Webbage uses), enabling browser caching is as simple as installing a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Super Cache.

Use a Content Delivery Network

A CDN is a network of servers based throughout the globe. When visitors access your website, they are delivered the site from a server that is as close to their physical location as possible, thereby improving site speed.

Using a CDN is an easy fix to instantly improve site speed and will have an immediate impact on site performance.

Here are some more technical changes you can make to further improve your site load speed:

Load JavaScripts at the Bottom

Take those script tags you see in any javascript web page and move them to the end of the page.

You’ll see a significant improvement in page load performance.

This is one of Google’s crucial performance metrics when displaying search results.

Lazy load images

This change will reduce the page load time drastically. Lazy loading basically avoiding to load all images on initial page load.

In other words, load them after the user scrolls to that section of the page.

every website is unique

A website should be as unique as the business it represents. At Webbage, we take the time to get to know what makes your business tick. This way we can build a website based around you, your business and your customers.