Page Speed- How it Impacts Your SEO (How To Improve It)

Even if your web pages have quality content, headers, title, quality, and a number of inbound links and URLs that could help improve upon the page ranking, still you could find your website falling in the rankings due to low page speed. Google has made it clear that page speed will also be taken into account in ranking websites. The reason given is that slow-performing websites do not provide users a better experience, as the loading time of each page could be a deterrent factor, resulting in poor user experience.

The loading time of a web page is the time taken for the page to the first byte, which is the time taken by the browser to receive the content from the web server. The slow pace of page loading could lead to the user losing patience and thereby switching over to another URL. The reason given by Google is logical and hence it is important to ensure improvement in the page speed. Here are some ways by which you can improve the page speed.

Code Compression:

Code compression could be used, where software applications like 7-Zip, Gzip, and bzip2 could help reduce the file sizes that are more than 150 bytes. These files include HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files.

Reducing Redirects:

Reducing redirects and 301 could help reduce the time to go to another page because the waiting time for completion of the cycle for HTTP request-response is reduced for a better user experience.

Simplifying Web Design:

Simplification of web design could help reduce the loading time considerably. This can be done by streamlining the elements of the page, combining multiple style sheets into a single sheet, reducing the number of scripts and placing them at the bottom of the page, and replacing images by using CSS.

Leveraging Browser Caching:

Leveraging your browser caching could also help reduce the page load time. Set your header for “expires” to a certain time so that all information is cached.

Using a Network for Content Distribution:

Use a network for content distribution so that your website copies that are stored at multiple data centers that are geographically diverse can be accessed faster by the user.

Other Ways:

Other ways by which you can reduce the time of page loading include, optimizing images, enhancing the response time of the server, and finally following the best SEO practices.

All set and done, your page could load within one second to give the user a better experience in browsing.