It is high time you do something about your site’s speed if the people who visit your website always complain that your site is slow. Studies reveal that slow websites are likely to lose visitors than fast loading websites. Your visitors should see the content of your pages in as little as seven to eight seconds or you risk losing them to other sites on the Internet.
You should also be aware that major search engines particularly Google now take into account site speed in ranking websites. You should therefore ensure that your site loads fast enough if you are working on your site’s SEO. Here are different ways on how you can improve your site’s speed and improve its chances of ranking high in the SERPs:
Heavy media files such as photos and videos can slow down your website so if your site does not load fast enough, you might want to check out if you are posting more media files on your pages than necessary. Your site, for example, won’t immediately load up if a video auto plays whenever somebody visits your site. It may also take your visitors quite a while to see and read your articles if your pages are all filled with photos, charts and illustrations. Although images and videos can add color and visual interest to your site’s pages, using too many of these on your site can have a negative effect on your site’s speed. You should therefore remember to put the number of media files to a minimum so as not to affect your site’s speed. Should you need to use media files, upload the images to a third party photo hosting site such as Photobucket or Imageshack. You can also have your videos hosted on Vimeo or YouTube instead of loading them to your own server.
Enabling browser caching for your site may sound too complicated but if you are using WordPress as your CMS, you do not have to be tech savvy to do this. You just need to install the W3 Total Cache plugin to enable browser caching for your website. This plugin also provides you with a lot of other options that can help speed up your website.
The quality of your web hosting can significantly affect the loading speed of your website and even if you observe all the best practices that can help boost your site’s speed, you efforts will be useless if your site is hosted by a web host that offers inferior services. You should read reviews well before signing up for a hosting provider’s services particularly because there are web hosts that are known to overload their servers. It is also best to move from a shared hosting account to a VPS if your site has grown and already serves thousands of visitors per day. Availing of VPS hosting can ensure the stability and speed of your website. Cost of VPS varies among provider but you may contact your web host’s VoIP number to ask for the price and details of their VPS hosting services.
Make use of a content delivery network (CDN) if you want to boost the speed of your site. A CDN is a network of servers that are strategically distributed in different locations around the world. You can pay for premium CDN services such as MaxCDN and Amazon CloudFront but you can also opt for Cloudflare if you want to avail of free CDN services for your site.
You should also be aware that major search engines particularly Google now take into account site speed in ranking websites. You should therefore ensure that your site loads fast enough if you are working on your site’s SEO. Here are different ways on how you can improve your site’s speed and improve its chances of ranking high in the SERPs:
Avoid Using Too Many Videos and Photos on Your Site
Heavy media files such as photos and videos can slow down your website so if your site does not load fast enough, you might want to check out if you are posting more media files on your pages than necessary. Your site, for example, won’t immediately load up if a video auto plays whenever somebody visits your site. It may also take your visitors quite a while to see and read your articles if your pages are all filled with photos, charts and illustrations. Although images and videos can add color and visual interest to your site’s pages, using too many of these on your site can have a negative effect on your site’s speed. You should therefore remember to put the number of media files to a minimum so as not to affect your site’s speed. Should you need to use media files, upload the images to a third party photo hosting site such as Photobucket or Imageshack. You can also have your videos hosted on Vimeo or YouTube instead of loading them to your own server.
Enable Browser Caching
Enabling browser caching for your site may sound too complicated but if you are using WordPress as your CMS, you do not have to be tech savvy to do this. You just need to install the W3 Total Cache plugin to enable browser caching for your website. This plugin also provides you with a lot of other options that can help speed up your website.
Choose Your Web Hosting Provider Well
The quality of your web hosting can significantly affect the loading speed of your website and even if you observe all the best practices that can help boost your site’s speed, you efforts will be useless if your site is hosted by a web host that offers inferior services. You should read reviews well before signing up for a hosting provider’s services particularly because there are web hosts that are known to overload their servers. It is also best to move from a shared hosting account to a VPS if your site has grown and already serves thousands of visitors per day. Availing of VPS hosting can ensure the stability and speed of your website. Cost of VPS varies among provider but you may contact your web host’s VoIP number to ask for the price and details of their VPS hosting services.
Use a CDN
Make use of a content delivery network (CDN) if you want to boost the speed of your site. A CDN is a network of servers that are strategically distributed in different locations around the world. You can pay for premium CDN services such as MaxCDN and Amazon CloudFront but you can also opt for Cloudflare if you want to avail of free CDN services for your site.
Author’s Bio: Chiastine Ross, a freelance article writer and contributor who focus more on technology, mainly Gadgets and all the latest trends which are interesting for readers and tech enthusiasts. Her articles are written in collaboration with other Phone Service Providers like RingCentral. You can reach her though Facebook and Twitter
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