How Optimising Your Websites Load Speed Can Boost Your SEO Rankings
Google and Bing are today hugely popular search engines because of two main factors. The first is that they’ve been around for a while and the second? That’s because they deliver results that work. As a website owner, that means getting to the top of these two search engines is without a doubt the most important part of your business.
However, that’s easier said than done, isn’t it? Getting top-ranked these days is a constant dance of back-linking, content optimizations and page tweaking to build a website that’s as much user-friendly as it is search engine friendly. Things are always getting more complicated, and today there’s yet another super-important factor to consider – your page load speed.
In a world that’s filled with broadband and multi-core processors, you wouldn’t think that page load speed should be much of an issue, but it is. For the search engines at least, it’s proving to be a valuable metric in judging the efficiency of your site and most importantly how user-friendly it is. In what seems to be harkening back to the days of old when one had to avoid too many images and fancy effects.
Today web designers are faced with a similar dilemma as JavaScript AJAX enhancements, server-side scripting and web 2.0 rich user interfaces have once again started to slow things down. Sadly, the search engines have noticed and slow load times could very well mean poor rankings. As a result, there’s never been more importance on tweaking your pages load speed and ensuring that you’re content is as efficient as possible.
How to increase website load speed
While having a fantastic looking site brimming with valuable information and high-quality pictures is advantageous, it is also important that the site runs smoothly. Any site should be easy to navigate, fast to load and easy to use. If these three boxes aren’t ticked, you can lose customers and revenue rather than gain them.
One of the most important decisions you will have to make when putting a site together is which server to use. Many server companies offer different packages, many with unlimited access. This is all good news, but you will still need to do some homework to determine which are online more than down, which offer faster speeds and which are accessible from around the world.
A web hosting company that offers server space is one thing, but not all of them will tick the boxes you feel is important for your company, so do your homework and make your selection with care, taking speed, functionality and performance into consideration.
Another important element is to cache any landing pages, this will help your pages load faster and ensure your customers have an enjoyable online experience. Using website load speed test software can also help you ensure these pages load with ease and without delay, reducing the risk of your customers moving on to another website to find what they are looking for.
It is very important when designing your website that the pages are named clearly. This can help your customers find what they are looking for with ease and also help you in search results. Remember even easily named pages must load quickly to improve customer experience and retention.
Using website load speed test software you are able to improve your visitor’s engagement with the site. In many cases a customer will visit a site and start looking through the pages to see what appeals to them, they may already have a specific product or service in mind. If they cannot get to the page quickly and easily, they are just going to move on. It’s important you analyse your site thoroughly to ensure it can manage the load and thereby improve your customer’s experience. In turn, your customer will be more engaged, maybe looking at more products and services than originally intended, possibly resulting in a sale.
Website load speed test software is also useful to assist you in identifying problems as they happen or early on. To improve your site functionality and performance using these software options can make a huge and positive impact on your company and customer experience.
Knowing the load times as experienced by your customers enables you to be put in their shoes using your site. While you can test the site yourself after it’s developed, chances are you will be the only person on there, you need to know how it will manage when there are a large number of customers online at any given time. The site should be able to perform under strain without compromising your customers view on the site and how they feel it performs.
Remember that as your business grows so will your customer base, this can result in a large number of customers logging into your site at any given time. It is essential your website can manage the load placed upon it during busy periods, offering an exceptional service to all your customers.
It is a foregone conclusion if your website is slow people will leave your site and this is a loss in your business since potential sales have gone away. People do not have patience in slow loading sites such that if you are one in this category you have to do the necessary improvements. Surveys show that a user stays on a page only a couple of seconds to tickle their interest and have no interest on what they view, the back search button always come in handy. What more if they will have nothing to view because of slow loading sites, their patience will be challenged. Another thing that is more of a disadvantage for websites that are slow loading is the new consideration of a major search engine. Google is now using website speed as a ranking factor, such that being left behind and your site still slow loading, you will not be plucked from the bottom of the search pages.
Website load speed may force webmasters to streamline their sites and take a closer look at load-speed. Any announcement that persuades a website designer to improve load-speed, so that a visitor does not have to wait 10 seconds to read the content should be seen as a step forward. Improving a site’s load-speed using our services should not be done just to please Google; any site upgrade should be geared towards improving visitor experience.