Performance and speed are very crucial for a website if you want a good conversion rate or if you want to rank in the top 10 in Google’s SERP.
If you have a slow website, you will lose many customers because a study shows that average users wait for a maximum of 3 seconds for a website to load fully. Almost 60% of users leave if they have to wait for more than 3 seconds.
In this article, I will discuss a few factors that you need to consider if you want your website to have a good SEO ranking, and then I am going to teach you the best speed hacks to improve your website’s vital score.
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Benefits of Fast Loading Website
As we all know, no one likes slow-opening websites, not even me. Do you? Never, because if you have visited any website to find some solution, you will never want to wait for the website page to load.
We all expect to get quick results for our queries. In such a case, if your site takes time to load, then visitors will go somewhere else.
Apart From that speed of the website makes a massive difference in Google ranking also. Google also doesn’t give priority to slow-opening websites which makes their ranking down.
If you have a blazing-fast website, then you and your audience will get the following benefits-
- Better Search Ranking
- Reduce Bounce Rate
- Offer the Best User Experience
- Get More Sales & Traffic
- And Many More
So, in each condition, you should never ignore speed optimization to get better results to achieve your marketing goals.
Before you learn how to check website speed and the best hacks to improve page loading time, let me clarify one thing: website speed is one of the ranking factors that can harm your site ranking.
There are many other factors available that play an essential role in improving Google search ranking. Let’s see a short overview of the Ranking factor-
Essential Factors to Keep in Mind for an Improved Google Ranking
No specific and pre-defined factor gives you a 100% guarantee to rank #1 in the search engine. But you can try the below-mentioned factors that are crucial and make a massive difference in your Google search ranking.
Let’s see them one by one-
1: High-quality Content
Content is the ultimate thing in Google’s ranking factor. Creating unique and valuable content for your users is the best way to rank in Google’s SERP. When creating content, make sure that your content is unique and provides a certain level of value to your visitors.
Your content needs to have up-to-date information. If your content is similar to a website or they are written similarly, then it can be a horrible thing about your SEO ranking. The freshness of your content plays a huge role in the ranking of your website because if you are writing about a recent topic, then your information should be as current as possible.
2: Backlink and Search Intent
Backlinks are essential for any website’s ranking. This is how Google’s web crawler finds your website for indexing. These links are a kind of vote of confidence that decides if your website deserves to be in the top 10 rankings.
Search intentions are another vital factor for your website ranking. Search intents are basically what the user is looking for. You have to create the right kind of content according to the search intent, and you will also have an idea about whether your customers are ready to buy a particular product or not.
3: Website Loading Speed and Mobile Friendliness
Your website needs to have a good loading speed, or otherwise, you will lose many visitors. To check the speed of your website, you can use the MonsterInsight speed report. It will analyze your website and show you a report on the performance of your website. It will also give you suggestions which will make your website even faster.
You also need your website to be mobile-friendly because more than 3.7 billion users worldwide use their mobile phones to access the Web. That’s why you need your website to be optimized for mobile devices, and it will also improve your search ranking.
4: Keyword Optimization
A keyword is an essential factor for the ranking of your website. There are specific terms that the users use to search for a particular thing on Google. So, your website or blog must contain keywords that the user is looking for. This way, you can improve your website ranking by optimizing your content for specific keywords.
5: Website Structure
The structure of your website is also essential in SEO ranking. The design of your website is necessary for web crawlers to find your website and its pages. To improve the structure of your website, you can use a sitemap, a sitemap containing all the essential pages that you want the search engine to know about.
How to Check Website Page Speed?
You can find various tools (Google Page Insights, GTMetrix, Pingdom Speed Tool, etc.) that help you analyze your website speed to take appropriate action to fix speed issues.
Apart from that, here is the easiest way to check your site speed- If you are using the MonsterInsights Google Analytics Plugin to monitor your website growth performance, I have good news for you.
You can use MonsterInsights to measure your website speed within your WordPress Dashboard and take actionable steps to improve it.
To check the speed of your website through MonsterInsights, you need to install and launch a setup wizard to get started with MonsterInsights on your website.
Learn more about MonsterInsights installation and making use of it. Once you have installed and set up MonsterInsights,
Go to Insights -> Resorts -> Site Speed to get speed metrics.
Here you will see the overall site load time score for desktop and mobile in this report.
Apart from that, you will get more detailed metrics to speed up your WordPress website quickly and goals and how to improve/fix the site speed metrics to get better page load time.
Here is the breakdown of site speed metrics that you will see in the report-
- First Contentful Paint – Time is taken by visual elements on your website page, like images, fonts, and themes.
- Time to Interactive – The time difference between the page starting loading to when it’s no longer loading, and it is capable of reliably responding to user input.
- Total Blocking Time – The time difference between the First Contentful Paint to the Time to interact with your website.
- Server Response Time – Time taken by our server to respond after a visitor makes a request.
Now you have enough data to improve your website’s vital score. You can make changes accordingly and improve your website load time with MonsterInsights Detailed Site Speed Report.
Quick Note – Site Speed Report is available with MonsterInsights Pro. So, if you want to take advantage of this feature then you have to buy MonsterInsights Premium plan. Click on an exclusive link to avail 60% discount on MonsterInsights Pro Here.
Here are some of the best speed hacks that help you to improve your site speed dramatically. Let’s see them one by one-
8 Best and Easy Speed Hacks to Improve WordPress Site Vitals Score
Well, there are tons of methods available that help you to get better page loading time quickly. However, here I will explore the best 6 Speed hacks that are proven and widely used by many bloggers & developers to Speed up WordPress Sites.
So, without further delay, let’s get started-
1: Get the Right Type of Hosting Service
Choosing the right website hosting service can increase the speed of your website—a web host stores all your data and files. So, you need to select an excellent hosting service. You can choose a shared hosting service, but there is a downside to shared hosting when websites have heavy traffic.
It can affect your website because it uses all the resources on that server. If you want to solve this problem, then I think you should opt for a managed WordPress hosting service or a VPS hosting service.
2: Install Cache Plugin to Improve Response Time
Using a cache plugin can improve the server response time. The cache plugin stores the most requested information, and when a user first opens your website, the cache plugin creates a copy of your website.
The next time the same user visits your website, it will load a lot quicker. WP Rocket can be an excellent plugin for your WordPress website. It will increase the speed of your website dramatically.
3: Compress Your Image Before Uploading
When you click an image with your phone or camera and upload it on your website, the size of the image increases a lot. Large images mean your website will take much longer to load. So, you need to compress these large images, and to do so; you can use “TinyPNG.”
Which is a free tool. You just need to upload your image, and it will be compressed. If you still think that the size is not small enough, you can reupload the same picture to compress it more.
4: Use Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN will ensure that your website loads instantly for your users. CDN shows a static form of your website to the visitors so that the loading time of your website will be much less. Using a CDN, you don’t have to worry about your server location and the location from where a user is accessing your website. It will be taken care of by the CDN.
5: Use Fast-Loading Themes
It is vital to choose a fast & lightweight theme that is well-coded. Because some themes are very poorly coded, they will decrease the speed of your website. I would recommend you choose a simple and straightforward theme. It would be best for your website to avoid themes with any kind of animation or flashy design. Usually, these types of themes can slow down your website.
6: Avoid Using Custom Fonts
If you have a lot of custom fonts on your website, it can slow down your website. It would be best if you used fonts that are simple and easy to load. Custom fonts take a lot of time to render hence making your website slow. Using a single font throughout your website will make it easier to render. It will provide an excellent experience for your users.
7: Use Minimum (Essential) Plugins
WordPress Plugins enable you to add extra features & functionality to your site, and probably you may also use several plugins on your site. Make sure you are using only essential and must-have plugins.
Apart from that, you are advised to use only premium or top-rated plugins that are well-coded and optimized for speed. Also, delete unused plugins from the site to get better speed results.
8: Avoid Direct Upload of Video File
It is bad practice and makes your site bulky which impacts badly on your site load time drastically. You should never upload any video file on your site directly because it takes more bandwidth from your server and badly drops your site loading time.
You can use the video embed feature to display the video on your site from different platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, etc. It helps you to get better page loading time while accessing your website page.
Frequently Asked Questions – Site Speed Hacks
Why Is Website Load Time Important?
According to a survey, if your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, then 40% of visitors leave your site. That is why you should keep more focus on enhancing page load time and decreasing bounce rate.
How To Improve Site Loading Speed?
There are tons of methods available that help you improve your site speed. However, if you use blazing-fast hosting, lightweight themes & plugins, compress media files, and use caching plugins will help more in improving site load time.
How To Check Website Speed?
You can use any tools like Google Page Insights, Pingdom, GTMatrix, etc., to measure your page speed and get actionable tips to improve load time. Apart from that, you can use MonsterInsights Google Analytics to get Site Speed Metrics reports within your WordPress Dashboard.
Over To You
Now you have learned many things that are essential to get a better ranking in search engines. Along with that, you have also learned about how to check website speed and the 8 best speed hacks that help you improve your site load time.
This topic is vital and needs to be monitored closely because very soon, Google is going to launch a page experience algorithm in the upcoming month.
If you fail to improve your site speed, then you are going to lose maximum traffic as well as website search ranking.
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Happy Reading & Happy Blogging