One of the most important things you can do is learn how to speed up your website. Fast loading pages are critical for website success because they influence so many factors.
It is critical to remember that a high-performing website
requires ongoing maintenance. This will improve your website rankings, your
conversions will improve, and your visitor traffic will rapidly increase.
Even the most skilled professional will admit that the work of a website is never truly finished.
As a result, even if you are a web professional, a small
business owner, or a blogger, you must pay attention to the speed of your
website.
Before improving the speed of your website, it is necessary to
measure it.
In this article, we will cover the ways to improving the speed
of your website, one by one.
Check the loading time of your Website
To proceed, you can access the current state of affairs on
your website by examining the load time.
You can evaluate the performance of your website with the help
of various online tools, including
- Google Page Speed
- GT Matrix
- Pingdom
- Webpage Test and so on…
A good rule of thumb is that if the tool indicates that your
website loads in three seconds or less, you're in good condition.
However, if it takes longer, it is worth looking at the root
cause of such delay.
The above tools are ultimately intended to show you the
loading process of your website.
However, it is advisable to back up your website and database
files before making any changes to your website.
Select an Appropriate Hosting Service Provider
If your website appears to be slowing down, it could be due to
shared server space or your hosting provider. It might be the case that the
latter may not be capable of handling your content management system (CMS)
While it is acceptable to use low-cost shared hosting at
first, once you begin receiving traffic, you must ensure that your hosting
scales meet the demands.
However, the majority of web hosting providers provide a
variety of hosting services, such as:
Everyone starts with shared hosting, which is totally
acceptable. However, the server configuration can become a limiting factor for
your site's speed at some point. It’s important to upgrade to something more
suitable.
Also, it is necessary to keep in mind the location of the
server as it has a major impact on the page load time of the website.
The greater the distance between your server and the person
requesting to view your website, the greater latency in the response.
You can verify this by loading your site from various
locations in one of the speed testing tools.
As a result, it is preferable to select a hosting provider
with a data center close to where the majority of your audience resides.
Optimize your content
It is extremely important to examine your website content,
which may or may not be properly optimized.
In this context, optimization refers to images and media
content.
So, you can optimize your website content in the following
ways:
- Begin by compressing the images, without compromising on the quality. Fortunately, there are a plethora of image optimization website plugins available.
- Make certain that images are loaded directly to your server. This eliminates the need for any additional HTTP requests to load your images from another source.
- Use the appropriate image size for your user's screen. Remember that unused pixels add extra weight to your website.
- For your media content, start using lazy loading. This means that your images will only load when a page visitor views them.
Evaluate for Unnecessary Plugins and Themes
While plugins are a great way to make websites more functional
and add features, however, there is such a thing as having too many plugins.
Installing them indiscriminately on your site not only raises
the risk of security issues and conflicts, as well as the need for maintenance,
but it can also cause your website to slow down.
Many plugins add extra style sheets and JavaScript files to
the page, increasing the page weight and HTTP requests.
Furthermore, if they are not properly coded, they may load
these assets in places where they are not required, sometimes on every page!
So, to speed up your website, you can get rid of them.
Make use of Caching
Caching, in general, refers to storing parts or the entirety
of your website in such a way that they are faster to access and load.
It is the process of storing frequently requested data
locally, either on your server or in your web browser. Caching frequently
accessed data points on your local computer.
So, depending on the server type you are on, don’t forget
caching. Try browser caching if you use Shared Hosting or Managed WordPress
Hosting and your skills are limited. Website browsers employ a cache, which
reduces the number and size of HTTP requests thus, allowing web pages to load
even faster.
Use a Content Delivery Network
If you are catering to a global audience, there is an
alternative way to deal with latency and location issues, i.e. content delivery
networks
These are global networks of computers that contain a copy of
your website or at least its most important static files.
When it comes to speeding up your website, using a CDN has
several advantages, such as:
- Users receive data from the closest location to them. This reduces the distance and the possibility of lags and latency, thus increasing the page loading time.
- Instead of just one server, server load can be distributed across multiple servers. This reduces the possibility of download speeds slowing during peak traffic periods.
Optimizing Database
The majority of the advice in this guide is about improving
your site's front end. It is, however, equally important to consider what you
can do on the back end to speed up your website.
This is especially true when working with a database-driven
CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal. The database must be optimized on a
regular basis. This entails clearing it of unnecessary data and removing
temporary disc space.
This makes it leaner and allows it to respond faster.
In addition, you can optimize the database with the help of
plugins in your WordPress website or manually through a database management
program.
Conclusion:
Understanding how to speed up a website is a valuable skill.
Site performance is critical to the success of your website because it is
important to both users and search engines. Following the steps outlined above
will undoubtedly improve the speed of your website.
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