Human beings are always in a race; we want to see everything, achieve everything too fast. Therefore, our patience time has reduced, and we rarely wait for any web page to open; it takes a few seconds to load. The website’s success is determined by the traffic it pulls in. The loading speed and the loading time are the two most crucial factors among the hundred others that should be considered thoroughly. These components are the initial steps towards SEO ranking. The final goal is to accomplish a better SEO ranking to appear on the first page of google. Let’s talk about the things that affect the website and the tools that can be utilized to boost the page speed.
Web-page Speed or Loading Time
Page speed can be defined as the time taken by the webpage to load fully. This time is a dependent quantity, as the speed is associated with the website’s server, the page size, and the compression of the images included in the site.
There are many ways by which we can measure the page speed:
- Fully Loaded: It is defined as the time for the website to fully open along with other parts of the web page.
- Time to First Byte: It is the time duration consumed before the page begins to load.
- First Contextual Paint: It’s the time taken for the page to load partially, which means the content is visible, which allows us to read the page. The word partial is used as some of the content, which includes the images, audios, videos, or other files that take time load.
Alternatively, the website owners can opt for best SEO company to analyze their website and provide a SEO audit report to check where the gap is.
Impact of page speed on the rankings:
Time has a lot to play in the game of rankings. Each second can change the entire paradigm of your website. Less time spent in loading the webpage, more the probabilities of achieving a better rank.
- Customer experience: The power of customer experience in any field can do wonders. Either it can develop the right image of the website or the complete opposite. The presence of the user for a long time on the web page can be highly useful. The user’s exit from the web page because of some extra seconds leaves the customer with a bad experience. It also creates a negative notion about the website.
- Smartphone effect: Nowadays, everybody has smartphones in their hands all the time. No matter how good the content is on the website, if the webpage doesn’t load on time, the content primarily would be of no use. Talking about the youth, today’s youth is quite aware of these things and tend to review everything either verbally or on social media. If the review is useful, the ranking is escalated, but if the review is not satisfactory, then the reputation and the rankings drop drastically. Consulting these scenarios with a digital marketing company can help you in getting rid of all these problems.
Techniques to Improve Page Speed:
- Facilitate browser caching: It allows some parts of the webpage to be downloaded on your phones or laptops. It gets stored in your cache or your temporary storage space of your system. However, it only works for existing users, as these files are already stored in their systems, and their next visit to that site, the page will consequently load quickly with a good speed.
- Accurate image compression and optimization of files: Images take up around 1504Kb as compared to videos (294KB), scripts (399KB), and cascading style sheets (45KB). Before you upload in the site, make sure you have reduced the image’s size without deteriorating the quality of the picture.1. The image’s ideal size should be below 150KB, with a width of 1920 pixels and a print resolution of 72 dots per inch. If you want to use large images, then use optimization software like Image Optimizer or Compressor.io. The optimization is necessary, as it will help the page to load faster.
2. In case of file extensions: Use Scalable Vector Graphics for vector images. Use PNG for images, where you need a transparent background. Use JPG, where final detailing is not a necessity.
The optimization is necessary, as it will help the page to load faster and boost your search engine ranking. Hire the best SEO services company in gurgaon to boost your ranking in search engine by determining the flaws in the website and fix them with ethical SEO techniques as per google algorithms in 2020.
- Minimize HTTP requests: HyperText Transfer Protocol requests are the request sent by clients to the server to obtain information on the requested content. These requests eat around 80% of the webpage load time. The more the HTTP requests, the more time it will take to load. To decrease the HTTP requests, the following are methods which can be used:
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- Combine the Cascading Style Sheets and Java Scripts files: Merging these files into one large file will help you maintain the loading time in the long run.
- Only load necessary images: Only allow required images to run on desktop i.e., a specific script on mobile. Employing conditional statements to load is a terrific way to enhance page speed.
- Avail Content Delivery Network and unused scripts/files: A CDN is an accumulation of web servers located across several locations for the content to be delivered successfully to the users. The user is connected to the nearest server via CDN i.e., the user’s network proximity. The server is chosen based on its response time and lesser network glitches.
Inference: There are many ranking constituents along with page speed. Page speed is of utmost importance as it’s the direct ranking component. The quality of the speed of a webpage makes your website one step closer to a high SEO ranking. The status of the site will ultimately improve if all the tools are used to rightly. Paying attention to all the factors affecting the SEO ranking will lead you towards Google recognition, as it will help your website to come on the first page.