10 Effective Solutions to Speed Up Your Website

Website performance is one of the most important drivers of conversions and digital brand growth. A loading time of more than three-four seconds is already considered a death sentence when discussing SEO. So you should speed up your website as much as possible.

To help you avoid the most common mistakes that drastically slow down online performance, we have prepared a short guide on speeding up your landing pages and branded websites.  You may also wish to seek external help from digital marketing agencies in the UK.

1. Reduce the Size of Your Website’s JavaScript and CSS Files

At its core, a website is just a collection of code written using mark-up languages. The longer the code, however, the larger the size of a JavaScript or a CSS file.

Any CSS and JavaScript file that is larger than 150 bytes can be a slog to download. Particularly when using a slow mobile Internet network.

To address this, you can use software packages like Gzip that can automatically compress CSS and JavaScript files. Resulting in faster loading of the files to speed up your website.

2. Eliminate Link Redirects

Redirects are a bane to website performance. For example, if your website redirects a user from ‘mycompany.com’ to ‘mycompany.com/mobile’ and then to ‘mycompany.com/mobile/home/’. The total load time is likely to exceed four or more seconds.

Luckily, you can eliminate unnecessary redirects and make sure that your users always land on the most relevant pages. If you’re unsure of what to do, hiring a professional link building service is sure to decrease website load times and improve your search ranking to attract more users. 

3. Using a Content Distribution Network

A content distribution network (CDN) essentially duplicates your website on several geographically diverse servers. This drastically reduces server load times and provides a much smoother website viewing experience.

If you’re concerned about having to manually update each copy of your website, you can always rely on SEO professional services. Such services typically include establishing and automatically maintaining a CDN, allowing you to focus on other concerns. 

4. Reduce the Size of Images and Videos

If your website includes lots of images and videos, it can be a chore to access. Especiallyspeciall if your multimedia files are not compressed. If you have the time, you can always address this issue manually. Using Photoshop and similar software to reduce the size of your images without sacrificing quality.

However, image and video compression can also be outsourced to other parties. While this service is not typically a part of white-hat link building services, hiring professionals to compress your files can save a lot of time. 

5. Remove Plug-Ins Not Affecting Users’ Experiences

If you’ve used a website constructor such as WordPress to create a website, you most likely have plug-ins that do absolutely nothing for your website’s UX. WordPress, in particular, provides an extensive plug-in database, making it easy to add irrelevant plug-ins.

Each plug-in increases server load time, having a devastating effect on website performance. Disabling and uninstalling useless plug-ins can save at least a second in load times. Helping you easily speed up your website. 

6. Use External Hosting Websites

If you need your website to display high-quality videos or images, don’t upload these files on your website. Each video or image can easily exceed 100 MB in size, creating intense server loads. In some cases, making your website inaccessible to mobile devices.

Instead, you should use YouTube, Video or Imgur to host large files without congesting your servers. If you’ve never used these platforms before, any good link building service should automatically take care of any file outsourcing. 

7. Enable Caching

Caching refers to the ability of the server to store your website information. When loading your homepage, a cached server will immediately provide pre-stored information on its HTML and CSS mark-up. Rather than retrieving the relevant files for each user.

Caching drastically increases loading speeds to help speed up your website. It is also useful if you’re using any third-party services and is easy to implement using plug-ins or ready-made HTML code. 

8. Use Asynchronous Loading

Synchronous loading is where a user’s browser downloads the necessary HTML and CSS files in sequential order. This is incredibly slow as the user has to wait for the website to load all elements before accessing the content.

In contrast, asynchronous loading allows for loading several files at the same time. This way, the user can access the core website immediately while images and videos load a second or two later. Essentially speeding up the initial load time of your website and reducing bounce rates to improve SEO.

9. Regularly Evaluate Your Website Speed

It can be easy to forget that website speed is not static and can change rapidly. Depending on changes in the server load and the addition of new content.

To avoid any sudden spikes in website load times, you can use free tools such as Google Page Speeds. Revealing problems in order to make appropriate changes to speed up your website.

For instance, if a specific plug-in messes up the viewing experience. You can always request your digital agency of choice to remove it or find a new substitute. 

10. Change the Website Host

If your host regularly fails to update their hardware, even the best SEO services can fail to attract new users to your website. In some cases, the difference between good and bad hosting services can be more than 1.5 seconds in terms of website loading times.

If you’re concerned that your host is not getting their job done, it may be time to search the market for a new hosting provider. Checking reviews of alternatives or speaking to your hosting provider to find the best resolution for your business.

Final thoughts

Website optimisation can be tricky. Luckily with a good host, the use of great white-hat link building services, asynchronous loading and caching, your users are sure to enjoy a stable website filled with great content.

A fast website is not just easy to use but also is a very powerful marketing tool. Helping to improve your SEO ranking and reduce bounce rates. Leading to more traffic, higher conversions and potentially more sales for your business.

Start implementing these tips right away and speed up your website to reap the benefits today!