Does Your Website Loading Speed Impact Your Search Ranking?
Since the Panda update, Google’s programs include certain factors important to the experience of human users in their search engine rankings. One such factor is the time that it takes for the website to load and be prepared for viewing by a visitor. Slow loading times decrease the ranking of a website, and can have a negative effect on other relevant factors such as bounce rate and click through rate.
How to Speed Up Your Loading Times
There are a number of options available to you for speeding up the loading
times of your website depending on your skills and the resources at your disposal. Some of these might be out of your reach if you cannot afford them, while others are more easily accessible. Implement the ones that you can while keeping the rest in mind in case you ever muster up the time and resources to be able to implement them in the future.
Web Hosting
Choosing the right service provider and web hosting option can make a crucial
difference in the loading speed of your website. If you are using shared hosting, then you are sharing the same server computer with a number of other users, meaning that you are sharing a limited amount of computing resources with those individuals and organizations. Although shared hosting is cheap, this can pose a serious hindrance if usage is high. The best solution to this problem is to use dedicated hosting, but your business might find too expensive to be worth the cost.
Graphics Usage
Although you might be tempted to include all manner of dazzling images to
overawe visitors to your website, restraint is a virtue when it comes to website design. Try cutting down on the use of images that take more time to load if they do not add to the overall visual appeal of your website. Similarly, try to cut down your loading time by reducing the size of these files. Remember that you do not need to present all of your images in the best quality possible, only enough so that they still look good when viewed on your website.
File Management
Images aren’t the only files that can make loading times longer. Most websites
include embedded items such as CSS and JavaScript files. Try cutting down on their usage and make sure to use the ones that you must include in a manner that will incur as little delay as possible.
Caches
You can use caches so that portions of the individual pages that make up your website are stored on the computers of your visitors. This way, if those visitors return to your website, those portions will already be present for display, meaning that they’ll have a faster loading experience simply because there is less information that needs to be loaded.
HTML Compression
HTML compression simply means compressing the information that makes up the pages of your website into smaller packages and then sending them to your visitors where they can be decompressed. This practice speeds up loading times for your website because less information needs to be sent out through the Internet.
Author Bio: Guest post contributed by David Kendall on behalf of Who Is Hosting This. David is a freelance internet technology writer who enjoys writing for various online publications.
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