9 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE DOWNLOAD SPEEDS FOR SEO
Does your website download quickly? Many people don’t realize that a website with a slow download speed will have a lower ranking on search engine results pages. That is why you need to ensure that your website’s download speed is fast for SEO purposes. Otherwise, it could have a negative impact on your website’s ranking in Google, Bing, and other search engines.
WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Why does this happen? Slower websites have higher bounce rates, which search engines penalize by lowering their ranking in the search results pages. That way, users searching for websites will only see the fastest and most relevant websites listed at the top.
Would you like to know how to increase your website’s download speed? Here are the top 10 ways to improve the download speed of your website for SEO purposes.
KEEP YOUR WEBPAGES SHORT AND SIMPLE
There is no need to overstuff your homepage or other web pages with dozens of images and videos because too much media content on a single page will slow it down. Try only using a few pictures or videos on each page to ensure it can download quickly.
SOLUTION
If you must have a longer page with anchor links to various sections, use smaller images to shorten the download time. If you have videos, you could embed them into the page from a third-party hosting provider so that it doesn’t download from your hosting provider.
OPTIMIZE AND COMPRESS YOUR IMAGES
Are you stuck with large-sized image files for your website? One way to get around this problem is to use an image compression software tool to shrink the image file size. The amazing thing is that the quality and integrity of the imagery will still be intact after reducing the file size.
SOLUTION
You can find plenty of free online image compressors, such as ImageOptim, ShortPixel, Compressor.io, and TinyPNG. Each one has different features and file formats, so choose the best one to suit your needs.
HOST ON A DEDICATED SERVER
Shared hosting servers are cheaper to rent and use for your website, but they are not always reliable. Since these hosting servers share resources with other websites, there is a greater chance of downtime or slow server response time when people try to access your website. That means it will take more time for visitors to download your website.
SOLUTION
Hosting your website on a dedicated server can solve this problem because it does not share resources with any other website. Because of this, there is far less chance of downtime or slow server response time when hosting on a dedicated server.
USE A CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK
Major websites with large-sized videos and rich media content don’t have the luxury of being able to compress their video and image files without degrading the quality. So, they distribute their website and media assets across a content delivery network.
SOLUTION
A content delivery network utilizes the resources of multiple hosting servers to increase the download speed of website content for users. It is the same type of network that video streaming companies like Netflix use to ensure fast download speeds for their customers. If you have a massive website with large media files, you might want to consider using a content delivery network to increase the download speed for your visitors.
DONT USE DOMAIN REDIRECTS
Some people like to redirect a domain name to the longer URL address of their website. That is not a good idea because redirecting is an extra step in the downloading process. Search engines are not too friendly to website domains with redirects attached to them.
SOLUTION
Make sure your domain name is directly connected to your hosting server. You can do this by adding the nameservers of the hosting server to your domain name in the settings configuration.
REMOVE PLUGINS
Web content management systems like WordPress let you add all kinds of helpful plugins to your website. The problem is that using too many plugins can slow the download speed.
SOLUTION
You are better off using no more than two plugins for your website to increase the download speed. Just use the most important plugins while removing the less important ones.
REDUCE THE NUMBER OF HTTPS REQUESTS
Having too many individual files and resources on your website will slow the download speed for visitors because they will have to send several HTTP requests to your server to download them all.
SOLUTION
What you need to do is reduce the number of HTTP requests by figuring out a way to combine the various CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files. That way, you cut down on many of the unnecessary files and resources to increase the download speed.
GZIP WEBSITE FILE COMPRESSION
Gzip is the name of a website file compression tool. It lets you compress all the files on your website to help them load faster for users. Not only does it compress media files, but it can also compress JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and other coding script files.
SOLUTION
You can expect up to an 80% reduction in the sizes of your website files after compressing them with Gzip. Most hosting servers give you the option to activate Gzip if you desire. Make sure to activate it on yours if it hasn’t been activated already.
ENABLE BROWSER CACHING ON YOUR WEBSITE
Browser caching is a special website download configuration method where you allow a visitor’s computer to save website file data onto their computer devices after visiting a website. That way, the website will download much faster when they revisit the website because they won’t have to redownload the same web page resources over again.
SOLUTION
There are a few ways to enable browser caching on your website. You can modify the HTTP response headers to define the cache response, or you can configure the .htaccess file on your website to set the cache limits. Alternatively, if you have a WordPress website, you can download and install a browse caching plugin that will do it all for you.
MONITOR YOUR WEBSITE SPEEDS REGULARLY
Use Google PageSpeed Insights to monitor your website speed regularly. It features a collection of tools that can show you where your website needs improvement to increase its speed. Just follow the tool’s suggestions to ensure your website stays at optimal speed for your visitors.