Site Owners Can Optimize Website Speed use this 10 ways
1. Use a content delivery network.
A content delivery network, or CDN, is a system of servers distributed in different places around the globe, that deliver web content to each user based on their location.
The usage of CDN will, of course, make it faster for visitors to see the page, wherever they are in the world. And that usually comes with your hosting provider.
But if you don’t have it set up, make sure you ask your host about it.
2. Leverage browser caching.
Caching is storing data in a temporary storage area (known as a cache).
Browser caching is the process of storing data files on your computer when visiting sites. These files are downloaded from your browser and delivered to you in the form of a web page. But in reality, it’s a ton of images, CSS, scripts, html files, and more.
That process of storing happens so that you can save bandwidth and reduce server load.
And that’s why we are often prompted to clear cache. Over time a lot of it is stored and we need to get rid of the old one, so the browser can perform more efficiently.
To leverage browser caching on your platform so that you can optimize website speed, means to identify how long browsers should keep all these files locally.
By doing this you will make sure each user’s browser downloads less data and thus opens up your site quickly.
3. Minimize redirects.
We see a redirect when we visit one page that gets us to another.
Basically, we don’t get to the final destination directly, but are redirected there by the browser. It first needs to connect to another page, before it takes us to where we want to land.
is you can guess, having many of these makes a page load slowly. Even one redirect isn’t good for site speed for that matter.
The simple rule of thumb when looking to optimize website speed is to avoid redirects, always.
Sometimes, they might be necessary, though. As is the case with telling search engines whether to consider our main domain the version with www, or without it.
Whatever we choose, when a visitor types the other one, they get redirected to the original. And that’s okay.
But using redirects for standard posts of pages, and many of them, is bad for user experience. So make sure you monitor these with one of the many tools available online, and do something to remove redirects.
4. Minify JavaScript, CSS and HTML.
No need to delve into what these 3 are exactly, but it’s important to know that when not taken care of, the size of these files is too big and slows down your site.
You need to use some kind of compression software to reduce them.
It’s recommended to enable gzip compression (the most popular option) so that you can compress web pages, code, style sheets and other elements, and then send them to a browser.
5. Compress images.
What we talked about above doesn’t concern image files. These should also be optimized with compression, but in a different way so that we don’t ruin their quality.
That simply means an image will be loaded for a visitor only when he gets to that part of the page. Makes sense, right?
6. Take a second look at your plugins.
As a non-tech savvy blogger, you probably rely on plugins that are already coded for you and which you simply install and use.
However, each of these makes our site heavier and affects speed. And it’s easy to start feeling comfortable with installing new ones regularly, without removing old ones.
So take a closer look at all that you’ve got on your site right now. Remove what’s not essential, as it will help you optimize website speed.
7. Optimize what’s above the fold.
Above-the-fold content is what you see when you open a page, without the need to scroll down.
Of course, that’s also the most important part of any page and where you have a chance to convince a visitor to stay in a matter of seconds.
It’s never a good idea to have too much code or additional elements there that might lead to increased loading time.
To optimize website speed, make sure you reduce what’s visible above the fold. Do that by limiting the files there and fixing render blocking of scrips and style sheets.
8. Keep your database clean.
The more content you publish on your site, the more drafts and other unnecessary files you get stored on the back-end such as tables and indexes.
Just like you need to clear out a recycle bin on a computer, so do you need to clean your database every now and then and get rid of those extra files that take up space and affect website speed.
9. Optimize web fonts.
Most of the websites out there are using custom fonts. While these look good, they also lead to more HTTP requests to other resources.
To avoid that, make sure you don’t use more fonts than you need.
Some font types aren’t automatically compressed, so you’ll need to take care of that by using gzip compression again.
10. Consider better hosting.
Last but not lest, keep in mind that your host has a lot to do with the speed of your site.
After all, you’re relying on their server and content distribution network. And it makes all the difference when there are reliable, secure and fast.
If you’re willing to invest a bit more in this, I’d suggest upgrading your package to one that uses dedicated hosting. This means you’ll be having one server for your website.
While with shared hosting, you’re using one with many other web site owners. Which is not only affecting performance and load time, but also increases the chance of someone hacking you through the server.
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