Why is website speed important part of new SEO strategies? How to increase speed ?

June 8, 2015 Web traffic,Website Strategies

Thousands of websites are popping on internet daily covering most of the “hot” topics. As the number increases, competition to come in top search results is increasing.

Business area hiring SEO agencies or in-house specialists and paying hundreds to thousands of dollars each month just to come in top 10 search results.

Why is it important to come in top search results?

As the online world is transforming with increasing number of mobile users, you can advertise your product/ service to more and more people. Digital marketing is not only the most cost efficient marketing means but with this mode you can reach maximum potential customers through filtered targeting.

As competition is increasing, individuals and companies are spending hundreds to thousands of dollars each month to optimize their websites for search engines.

For past few years, SEO has been limited to keyword optimization, on page & off page optimization, back linking and more similar things but a major factor has been neglected by more than 90% of the websites.

Loading Speed of Website

Some facts from Wpeed : Website Speed Optimization

500 Millisecond delay causes 20% drop in traffic – Google
100 Millisecond delay causes 1% drop in revenue- Amazon
More than 50% shoppers in World will not complete a purchase if the website is slow
A good website must load under 6 seconds
If your e-commerce site is making $10000 per day in sales, a 1-second page speed delay could cost you $250000 loss of sales every year.

Yes, speed is one of the most important factors and Google has officially announced that Page Speed will be one of importance factors in its search engine ranking algorithm.

Where does my site stands?
To check your website speed we recommend two tools:

1. Google Page Speed
2. GT Metrix

I personally use GT Metrix as they use Google Page Speed API & Yslow API, analyze your website speed and also provides you with a detailed list of factors which you can work upon and get better speed.

What is good speed range?
Faster the better:
1-3 Seconds: Best Speed
3-6 Seconds: Good Speed
6-8 Seconds: Average Speed
8+: Bad Speed

My website speed is slow, what shall I do?
If your website speed is slow, you must take few steps mentioned below first and if it still looks bad, contact some website speed optimization experts.

1. Leverage Browser Caching: Browser caching is one of the most important things you must implement on your website to get speed. If you are on WordPress, I recommend proper implementation of W3 Total Cache (Just Installing it won’t help, proper configuration is required). If you are on some other platform, consult your developer.

2. Enable Gzip Compression: You can do this easily from your server end, contact your hosting or you can find the same option in W3 Total Cache too.
In WordPress go to www.example.com/wp-admin/options.php/  and find Gzip (there are numerous options there so use your computer’s find feature), make sure the value in Gzip field is 1, this will enable Gzip compression.

3. Fewer media files on homepage: Homepage is undoubtedly most important part of any website but stuffing it with tons of media files (sliders, images, self-hosted pdfs or videos) is a bad idea.

4. Optimize & Scale Images before uploading: I have seen many site owners who upload their camera clicked images on the website. What happens in such case?
The upload size of an image is somewhat like 2-4 Mb, 2000px and your website visitors will have to wait until this giant enters their computer.

So, you must first optimize your images using some good compressor, for JPEG images I recommend Advanced JPEG Compressor and for PNG images Tinypng.com is great.

For scaling images to proper website friendly resolution, you can use Adobe Photoshop or your other photo editing tool.

Hope this helps you in getting your website in good shape and provide a great experience to visitors.

For any queries and comments use the comment box below.