Fast websites are good for SEO, user experience, and conversions.
The need for speed. WordPress is the world’s number one content management system used to build and manage over 25% of all websites. And while WordPress is an extremely powerful platform that is SEO “friendly”, some aspects of the platform can have detrimental effects on SEO. Because WordPress is so “robust” it is also very large and sometimes the size of the core files and databases can make websites load more slowly than expected. This slowdown can increase over time as websites get bigger, databases grow and content libraries expand.
What is Page Speed?
Page speed is often confused with “site speed,” which is actually the page speed for a sample of page views on a site. Page speed can be described in either “page load time” (the time it takes to fully display the content on a specific page) or “time to first byte” (how long it takes for your browser to receive the first byte of information from the web server).
Is Website Speed That Important?
Yes. Fast websites are good for SEO, user experience, and conversions. And you may already know that Google is now using page load speed as one of its main ranking factors. Making your website load faster is one of the best things you can do to improve its overall performance.
No matter how you measure it, a faster page load speed is better. Many people have found that faster pages both rank and convert better.
SEO Best Practices
Google has indicated that site speed (and as a result, page load speed) is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages. And research has shown that Google might be specifically measuring time to first byte as when it considers page speed. In addition, a slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation, search engine ranking and traffic volume.
Page speed is also important to user experience. Pages with a longer load time tend to have higher bounce rates and lower average time on page. Longer load times have also been shown to negatively affect conversions.
In our continuing effort to provide you with best-in-class web development and digital marketing services, we are excited to announce the launch of a new service to our SEO clients: WordPress Speed Optimization.
Our WordPress Speed Optimization is long term process consisting of proper server configuration, resources optimization, code improvements and ongoing file management – It is not a one-time task.
Here are some of the many steps we employ to increase your page speed:
Enable Compression
We use a software application for file compression, to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes.
Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML
By optimizing your code (including removing spaces, commas, and other unnecessary characters), you can dramatically increase your page speed. Also remove code comments, formatting, and unused code.
Reduce Redirects
Each time a page redirects to another page, your visitor faces additional time waiting for the HTTP request-response cycle to complete. For example, if your mobile redirect pattern looks like this: “example.com -> www.example.com -> m.example.com -> m.example.com/home,” each of those two additional redirects makes your page load slower.
Leverage Browser Caching
Browsers cache a lot of information (stylesheets, images, JavaScript files, and more) so that when a visitor comes back to your site, the browser doesn’t have to reload the entire page. We use a special tool to see if you already have an expiration date set for your cache. Then we set your “expires” header for how long you want that information to be cached. In many cases, unless your site design changes frequently, a year is a reasonable time period. Google has more information about leveraging caching here.
Improve Server Response Time
Your server response time is affected by the amount of traffic you receive, the resources each page uses, the software your server uses, and the hosting solution you use. To improve your server response time, we look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them.
Optimize Images
To make sure that your images are no larger than they need to be, that they are in the right file format and that they are compressed for the web, we analyze your image files and optimize them for proper loading.
Database/Server/Back End Management
Unlike other “one-time” WordPress Speed Optimization providers who merely use software “plugins” to accomplish their results, we elect to do things the right way. It’s a fairly simple process to add a few plugins, configure them, temporarily boost your site load time and send you on your way. But that’s not how we do it. Our WordPress Speed Optimization service is a comprehensive program that will conduct a detailed performance audit, review active themes and plugins, properly configure your code and server settings while continually managing your database entries and parsing temporary website files that can severely reduce load times.
While WordPress Speed Optimization Service is not mandatory, we are strongly suggesting that all of our SEO clients consider adding this service to their current online marketing campaign in order to insulate themselves from the detrimental long term effects that extended page load speeds can have on their ranking, traffic and conversion.
For more information on WordPress Speed Optimization and to see how enhancing your page load speed can provide the very best user experience for your cleints, customers and prospect, contact is today!
