Are You Ignoring This One Vital Thing for SEO?

Website speed is one of the key factors in improving your SEO and creating an effortless user experience. ‘In a 2019 survey by Unbounce, nearly 70% of consumers admitted that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.’ ‘The first five seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates. (Portent, 2019)’ and ‘website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time (between seconds 0-5).’ SEMrush declares that page load time is a primary ranking factor. It also effects conversion rate too. ‘A 1-second delay in your site speed can result in a 7% reduction in conversions.’ Why do you need to improve your site speed? There are several reasons why it’s important to improve the speed of a website: How to improve site speed There are many ways to improve the speed of a website. Here are a few general tips: These are just a few general tips to improve the speed of a website. It’s also important to regularly monitor the performance of your website and make adjustments as needed to ensure it remains fast and efficient. See below for tools that can help with this. How do you optimise images for site speed? There are several ways to optimise images for site speed: How many plugins should I use for good site speed? The number of plugins that you should use on your website depends on the specific needs of your site and how well-optimised the plugins are. In general, it’s best to use as few plugins as possible, as each plugin you add to your website can potentially add more code and resources that need to be loaded, which can slow down your website. That being said, there are some plugins that are essential for the functionality of your website and can actually improve the speed of your site. For example, a caching plugin can help speed up your website by storing commonly used resources on the user’s computer, so they don’t have to be downloaded each time the user visits the website. It’s important to carefully evaluate the need for each plugin you are considering using and to only use those that are necessary for the functionality and performance of your website. If you do use multiple plugins, make sure to keep them up to date and optimise them for performance. It’s also a good idea to regularly review the plugins you are using and consider removing any that are no longer necessary or that may be slowing down your website. How do plugins slow your website down? Plugins can slow down a website for a few reasons: By using as few plugins as possible and carefully evaluating the need for each plugin you use, you can help ensure that your website performs well and loads quickly. This is something that trips me up all the time. I love a good plugin, but I tend to overload my site with them and forget to disable those that are no longer working for me. And then my site crashes or takes ages to load. Oops! It’s also important to keep your plugins up to date and to optimise them for performance to ensure that they don’t slow down your website. How do you enable compression on your website? There are a few ways to enable compression on your website: Use a plugin: Many popular content management systems (CMS) have plugins that can enable compression on your website. For example, WordPress has several plugins that can enable Gzip compression, such as W3 Total Cache and Autoptimize. Use mod_deflate: If you are using an Apache web server, you can enable compression by using the mod_deflate module. To do this, you will need to edit the .htaccess file in the root directory of your website and add the following code: <IfModule mod_deflate.c>   # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript   AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-OpenType   AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-TrueType AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/XML AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml   AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/CSS AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/HTML AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/XML </IfModule> Use nginx: If you are using an nginx web server, you can enable compression by adding the following code to your nginx.conf file: gzip on; gzip_comp_level 6; gzip_vary on; gzip_min_length 1000; gzip_proxied any; gzip_types text/plain text/CSS application/JSON application/javascript application/x-javascript text/XML application/XML application/xml+rss text/javascript; gzip_buffers 16 8k; These are just a few ways to enable compression on your website. It’s important to note that compression can impact the performance of your server, so it’s essential to carefully consider the trade-offs between increased performance and increased resource usage when enabling compression. What is a content delivery network? A content delivery network (CDN) is a distributed network of servers that delivers web pages and other web content to users based on their geographic location, the origin of the webpage, and the content delivery server. CDNs are used to improve the performance and speed of websites by reducing the distance that data needs to travel between the user and the server and by offloading traffic from the main server. CDNs work by storing copies of a website’s content on servers located in strategic locations around the world. When a user requests content from a website, the CDN will serve the content from the server that is closest to the user, reducing the amount of time it takes for the content to be delivered. CDNs are commonly used by websites that receive a large amount of traffic or that serve users from around the world, as they can help improve the performance and reliability of the website. CDNs can also enhance the security of a website by providing features such as DDoS protection, SSL/TLS encryption, and rate limiting. How to use a content delivery network A content delivery network (CDN) is a network of