How to Speed Up Your Website Loading

One of the factors that influence the SEO ranking of a website or blog is the loading speed.

How many times have you left a website because it took too long to show you the content?

This happens when the page contains elements that are slowing down your loading speed and are a way for visitors to slip away, and therefore potential customers.

In this article, we explain how to speed up your website loading and factors to optimize and tools to achieve it.

Let’s get started!

Table of contents

How to Improve Your Website Loading Speed

The main reason you should optimize your website loading is that Google ranks faster websites better. Simple as that! Obviously, there are more factors that we will see below.

Google also takes this SEO factor into account to assess the “user experience on the page”.

You can imagine what this means for any online business, right?

– Well… a decrease in visits and with them, revenue.

That’s why we are going to see how we can speed up website loading.

1.- Hosting

Hiring good hosting is key to starting any web project on the right foot. Choose a quality server that offers memory resources and dedicated virtual hosting tailored to your site.

Depending on whether it is a basic website or an online store, the hosting should have RAM, CPU processor, high-speed SSD disks, and SSL security certificates.

2.- Caching

Caching is important for speeding up a webpage because it reduces the number of requests that need to be sent to the server. When a user accesses a webpage, requests are sent to the server to obtain the necessary resources, such as images, CSS files, etc.

These resources are temporarily stored on the user's device, and when they revisit the same page, the cached resources are displayed instead of requesting them from the server again.

By avoiding the transfer of the same resources repeatedly between the server and the client, it improves the website loading speed.

By reducing the number of requests to the server, responses to queries are faster, improving the user experience and achieving smoother navigation and quicker responses.

3.- WEB Design

We mentioned in one of our previous articles that the fundamental thing is that your website adapts correctly and efficiently to any device.

That’s why a web design that is as optimized as possible is required so that the loading speed is not affected.

Check if your website receives mainly mobile traffic and where it comes from, as connections can affect it. Remember to design (and analyze) with mobile in mind and how it loads.

4.- Size, Quality, and Selection of Images

To speed up website loading, you need to optimize images as much as possible before uploading them. Having a visually perfect website is of no use if no one visits it because it is slow.

When we talk about image optimization, we first refer to changing the image size to the smallest number of pixels necessary. Secondly, reducing the weight (MB or kB) of the image without losing its visual quality.

Therefore, you should consider:

– The optimal format is to use the webp file format as it allows images to be displayed with a smaller size than PNG and JPEG formats.

– Compressed images, but be careful with the size and quality when compressing them; ensure they do not appear pixelated.

– Use only the necessary images and do not add them for decoration, only those that contribute something to the content of your page or blog entry.

– Unless you are in love with the slider format, skip it. It was cool back in the day, but people no longer pay attention to them, and they are heavy.

– When uploading images to WordPress, you can change the image sizes to your preferred dimensions. Go to the settings option, in the media or gallery section, and you can adjust them.

– Use image optimization tools. There are many online tools available to optimize the size of your photos; some of them are:

Web Resizer or Optimizilla, ImageRecycle, TinyPNG, Imagify Image Optimizer, Short Pixel, Shrink Pictures, PngOptimizer…

As you can see in the example image, the before and after weight when using TinyPNG. Reducing from a weight of 2.7 MB to 246.9 kB.

This tool has a free version, so you can use it without any problem.

5.- Videos

Videos are the format that is still trending, but they can also be quite heavy, no matter how short they are or how good the image quality is. It’s better to use the YouTube link of the video you are interested in.

6.- Animations

Counterproductive and annoying for any type of website. Reduce them to the bare minimum or, even better, remove them without any remorse. If someone wants to see cartoons, they should watch Disney Channel.

7.- Don’t Overuse WordPress Plugins

Although WordPress is one of the most recommended CMS for creating websites… You should not install pointless plugins, as they are very heavy and can negatively impact website loading.

Each plugin added to WordPress requires additional resources to function. The more unnecessary plugins you have, the slower your website loading will be.

Only install the essentials, as the loading speed can be affected, and analyze those that may be impacting the proper performance of the website. Keep the essential plugins updated.

Regarding visual design themes, they also influence the loading time of the site. Install and choose those that have optimized HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code so that it does not affect the website loading.

WP Rocket Plugin to Speed Up Loading

And as everything in life is not negative, there are also plugins that speed up website loading. We refer to WP Rocket, considered one of the best optimization plugins in WordPress.

WP Rocket is one of the most powerful tools available to speed up website loading.

It offers a variety of features to improve loading speed, such as image optimization, minification of CSS and JavaScript code, and integration with content delivery services (CDN, which can be said to be a content delivery network or content distribution network).

WP Rocket improves loading time, PageSpeed performance score, and optimizes your website's Core Web Vitals.

8.- Keep Core Web Vitals in Mind

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics used by Google to evaluate user experience in terms of website speed and responsiveness.

These metrics measure the time it takes for web elements to load, among other metrics, and are important for website loading speed because they directly affect the user's perception of the site's speed and smoothness.

If Core Web Vitals are poor, users may experience slow loading, delays in interaction, and jerky movements on the page, leading to a bad user experience and early abandonment of the site.

To improve Core Web Vitals and therefore the loading speed of your website, it is advisable to optimize other factors we have discussed in the article, server performance, web design and development, LCP elements such as texts, images, JavaScript, etc…

As a curious fact, a few days ago Google published a tweet that we learned about through @seoestratega clarifying possible misunderstandings after removing page experience from its documentation on ranking systems.

They have not removed page experience as a “signal” but simply stated that it is not a “system” (that was the error they clarify on Twitter)

Original text:

“Our guide on page experience is here, as we shared last week along with our blog post: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience… *does not* say that page experience is somehow ‘removed’ or that people should ignore things like Core Web Vitals or mobile compatibility. On the contrary. It says that if you want to succeed with the main ranking systems of Google Search, consider these and other aspects of page experience.”

9.- Avoid Redirects

A redirect is when the user, by clicking on a link or typing an address, is directed to another location before reaching the desired webpage.

That’s why it can affect the website speed, and you should only use redirects as necessary.

10.- JavaScript

Only the necessary amount, and if it loads at the end, even better. The technique of placing it at the bottom of the page allows the content to be shown to the user faster, but it is taken into account with the initial load.

A complex web design can lead to the inclusion of unnecessary HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code. This increases file sizes and can slow down loading. It is important to optimize and clean the code, removing any superfluous or redundant elements.

11.- CDN and Script Loading

A third-party script can slow down your website loading, so you need to optimize the loading process. You can use the Perfmatters plugin.

With it, you can adjust different options of your CDN that will allow you to cache the contents, making the delivery of those files faster.

This plugin is similar to WP Rocket.

12.- Enable Gzip Compression

One of the easiest ways to speed up your WordPress site is to eliminate all unwanted resources or compress them.

That’s why it is advisable to activate GZIP compression on your web server.

It is a method used to reduce the size of web files, including HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript.

In this way, your site’s speed will improve, as visitors will be able to download the compressed data instead of the full-sized files.

13.- Excessive Advertising

We come back to the same point as with images. If you fill your page with banner ads, such as with Google Adsense, you are slowing down the website loading, but it is necessary if the goal is to make money.

Be careful and choose wisely when installing other monetization systems that make loading even slower.

Look at the image, and you will see how the ad image is larger and attracts more attention than the article image itself.

How to Measure Your Website Loading Speed

Test from various platforms to confirm if the slowness is due to your device or perhaps your Internet connection. And do it from a private window or incognito mode, instead of from your user or admin session.

Once you have ruled out the “individual” problem, you need to know how long it takes on average for your page to fully load.

If it takes more than 3 or 4 seconds, Houston, we have a problem… Your bounce rate will be high, and your ranking will be severely affected because the user experience is poor, and visitors will leave at the first opportunity. And that Mr. Google does not forgive.

There are a series of tools you can use to measure your website loading speed and that offer improvements and recommendations that can help you.

Google PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights is Google’s official tool for measuring website loading speed for both mobile devices and computers. It gives us a score from 1 to 100 and provides suggestions for improving that score.

Get the PageSpeed score for your website by simply entering the URL into the tool. So we encourage you to try it to see how optimized your website is.

Lighthouse

Integrated into Google Chrome, DevTools offers a comprehensive analysis of web performance, including speed metrics, image optimization, accessibility, and SEO. It provides detailed recommendations for improving speed and overall site quality.

GTMetrix

GTMetrix is a tool used to measure loading speed and performance of a website. It provides detailed information on how a site is loading and what elements are influencing slower loading times.

Pingdom Website Speed Test

Pingdom Website Speed Test is a very comprehensive and intuitive tool that provides you with detailed, revealing data in a very graphical way.

It allows you to evaluate and analyze a website's performance in terms of loading speed. It provides useful metrics and recommendations to optimize performance and improve user experience.

Yslow

Yslow is a web performance analysis tool developed by Yahoo!.

Its purpose is to evaluate and provide specific recommendations to improve loading speed and optimization.

It offers a detailed report that includes a performance score, component breakdown, and key metrics related to loading time, such as total page load time, the number of HTTP requests made, and total page size.

It gives you a grade, ranging from A (excellent) to F (very poor) for a total of 34 optimization rules.

YSlow is an extension that installs in the web browser, so tests and analyses are performed in the context of the user's browser.

Website Speed Test

Website Speed Test provides detailed metrics and analysis on page performance, including loading time, file sizes, and other relevant statistics.

This tool is useful for identifying areas for improvement and optimizing website performance, providing a faster and more efficient user experience.

In particular, this tool tells you the size of each file on your website.

Conclusion

And you, how many of these things do you think you have well implemented on your website?

Remember that optimizing images, using good hosting, caching, and following Google’s recommendations and those offered by the tools can successfully speed up your website loading.