Last updated on September 16th, 2024 at 10:37 am
Loading speed is a confirmed Google ranking factor. Although the search engine has never officially mentioned the time, industry experts say website pages should load under 2 seconds so that the users don’t have to wait any longer. Fulfilling this requirement will give a boost to the site’s ranking in the results – which is the ultimate goal…right?
But what if multiple pages on your site have loading issues? There is no need to worry, as you can perfectly optimize them by following the techniques discussed in this blog post.
However, before directly heading towards the steps, it would be good if we first briefly understand the importance of optimizing page speed.
Importance of Page Speed Optimization
Apart from just increasing SERP visibility, there are multiple other reasons why you should optimize page speed for quick loading. Those reasons are discussed below.
- Improved User Experience: Each site on the web strives to provide the best user experience to the traffic. However, when a webpage takes too much to load, it definitely frustrates the user, and they immediately leave or close the page. This leads to higher bounce rates, and ultimately lower rankings.
- Mobile-friendliness: Do you know? Mobile phones often have slow or low bandwidth. Due to this, even good websites struggle to load quickly. So, if a large portion of your targeted audience is mobile users, then it becomes a must to optimize page speed as much as possible.
- High Conversion Rates: Obviously, when the webpages load up quickly in front of potential customers, they will be more likely to take interest in the offerings resulting in increased conversion rates.
Approach for Optimizing Webpages Speed for Maximum SERP Visibility
There are numerous steps that can be taken to perfectly optimize the page speed of a website to achieve higher rankings in search engine results.
Perform Image Optimization
The first thing you need to do is optimize all the images and videos on the page whose loading speed you want to improve. Although, the optimization process will involve taking care of a number of things that we have discussed below.
Reduce the file size:
You should compress the images efficiently to reduce their overall size. The recommended image size is 70-100 kb. There are numerous online tools available such as TinyPNG that can be used for image compression. However, make sure the original quality (in terms of resolution) is not affected due to compression.
Choose the Right Format:
The format of the pictures also impacts their loading speed. So, choose the right format according to the image content. For photos, JPG or JPEG is the best. Whereas for logos/graphics, PNG is recommended.
Implement Lazy Loading Technique:
Finally, you can also consider using the lazy loading technique to prevent images from affecting site loading speed.
It is a technique in which images are deliberately loaded late so that other elements on the web page such as content, button, navbar, etc. can load quickly. When it comes to implementing this technique, you just have to add the “Lazzyload” class to the images and use IntersectionObserver to remove the class and load the image source when visible.
Optimize Code Files Through Minification
You should also optimize the code HTML, CSS, and JS files to improve page speed time for maximum SERP visibility. Wondering how this will work? Let us explain. When the code file of the page is small in size, it will be quickly transferred from the main server to the user’s browser, resulting in fast loading.
The code optimization can be easily done with the help of minification. It is a widely known and used technique that involves shrinking the HTML, CSS, and JS code by eliminating unnecessary:
- Characters
- Tags/classes
- Whitespaces
- New liners
While eliminating, make sure the working of the code remains unchanged. There are multiple ways through which minification can be done. One is the manual way, but it has multiple issues. For instance, manually minifying the code will not only require time and effort but also programming expertise, which everyone may not have.
Another way to perfectly shrink the code is through an online minifier. The tool will automatically minify JS, HTML, or CSS code without causing any damage to its original working. Due to this, most people including professional developers opt for such tools to save time and avoid the risk of human mistakes during code minification.
Leverage Browser Caching:
Most of you may not be aware of this but don’t worry, we are here to explain. Browser caching is a process in which the web browser (Google) stores static resources of a website (i.e., images, CSS, JS files.). So that, the next time the user visits the website, the browser can load more quickly.
So, you can also try this to optimize page loading speed for higher rankings. Let us explain how this can be done.
You can add “Expiration headers” to the cache assets in the browser. For example, Expires: 1 year; only for website files that won’t change often such as images, HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. Doing so will tell the browser to cache the assets of a website for a long period of time.
Apart from this, you can also consider utilizing special service workers. These will intercept network requests and serve cached resources offline or when the internet conditions are poor.
Minimize HTTP Requests:
Finally, you can also enhance page speed by minimizing the overall number of HTTP requests. These are basically special connections that a browser makes to effectively fetch HTML, CSS, or JavaScript files from the hosting server. So, by reducing these requests, you can significantly increase the overall page loading time.
There are numerous tips that you can follow to reduce HTTP requests. For instance, you can combine or merge both the CSS and JavaScript files into a single one. The same should be the case with images on the entire webpage. Moreover, it would help if you also considered minimizing the number of third-party scripts on the webpage or nonprofit website.
It is recommended to follow all these techniques mentioned above at once to optimize the page speed of your website perfectly for higher search visibility.
Wrapping Up
Your website pages must load under 2 seconds to experience a good rank in the search engine results. This is because Google has mentioned several times that it considers loading speed when evaluating site ranking potential. In this blog post, we have discussed different techniques that can be used to optimize page speed.
Naveen Khanna is the CEO of eBizneeds, a company renowned for its bespoke web and mobile app development. By delivering high-end modern solutions all over the globe, Naveen takes pleasure in sharing his rich experiences and views on emerging technological trends. He has worked in many domains, from education, entertainment, banking, manufacturing, healthcare, and real estate, sharing rich experience in delivering innovative solutions.
