Site speed is one of the top factors in ranking a website. So how do you know what is slowing down your website? Google PageInsights is Google’s tool in analyzing your website’s speed and giving you suggestions on what to fix. But are there are other things that could be impacting your website’s overall speed? There sure are. Actually, there are a lot of small things that, when accumulated, can have an impact on your site’s speed. It can get very technical. Here are some of the biggest factors that makes a huge difference in your website’s speed.
1. Optimize your database
Especially if you are using a Content Management System like WordPress, the database can easily be filled up with bad data. You will want to optimize it so that no data is missing, bad data can be removed, and space can be sorted out and freed.
2. Check your embed codes
If you are embedding anything on your website, check to see if it is the best one available. Choose a code that is lite on your site or remove it. You don’t need heavy code causing your website to load up slow.
3. Use caching when necessary
Caching means you don’t have to keep on reloading data over and over again. Speeds up your website immensely. It also has other benefits too.
4. Content Delivery Network
CDNs are used by many of the fastest websites in the world. They allow data from a website to travel from the server to user in a very short amount of time. Instead of data going through multiple servers to reach your browser, it travels through only one server which is optimized to transfer your data at the fastest speed possible.
5. Use small images
Or you can use compressed (but optimized) large images. Images use up a lot of space on a server and have a huge impact on your website’s loading speed. Trying using a plugin to optimize your images.
6. Bad hosting
Overlooked by many business owners, bad hosting can have a bad impact on your website. The server that has power and control over how fast your files load up on a person’s browser…..you want to make sure it has enough horsepower to support your site. Most people never look at their hosting because they already know the best hosting but just in case you don’t, always check.
7. Javascript
Javascript, besides images, can cause a huge load on your server because they allow any user to interact with your website. Moving your javascript code to the footer of your site could make your website load a lot quicker.
8. Minimize external files
The amount of files needed to load up your whole website should be as internal as possible, meaning they should be on your server and not hosted on an outside server. This way, your website doesn’t have to spend extra time connecting to other servers just to load up your data.
Resources:
Aykira.com – The importance of loading speed / 3 factors that limit loading