Page Speed Optimization - How Fast is Your Site

Page speed optimization (how fast your site is) is an essential metric for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Google themselves have officially stated that page speed is one of the significant variables in their page ranking algorithm. In addition to being a significant signal for Google’s page rank algorithm, page speed is essential to your user base. Research has shown that pages with longer load times have a higher bounce rate than faster ones. Since page speed is crucial to search engines, it should be important to you and your web team. So first, we’ll show you where to find your page speed. Then let’s explore some ways to improve your page speed score.

How Fast is Your Site? – Where to Find Your Page Speed Score

One of the best places to discover your page speed score is a web tool called GT Metrix. This tool will give you two different speed scores, YSlow and PageSpeed. To use GT Metrix, visit their website, enter your URL in the large field, and click “Analyze.”

After the tool is done scanning your site, it’ll spit out a few different scores.

Don’t like your Page Speed score? Don’t worry! There are things you can do!

Compress Some Large Files

One of the first things you should do to help improve your Page Speed score is to compress your larger files. Use a tool (something like Gzip) to compress HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files larger than 150 bytes. This will help reduce response times and improve your Page Speed Score. *NOTE – Do NOT use Gzip to compress images and video files. This will remove your ability to control the quality of your final product.

Minify Your HTML, JavaScript, and CSS Code

What “minifying” code means is to reduce the number of unnecessary bits. This is done by removing unnecessary characters, spaces, commas, comments, and unused code. There are a few tools that Google themselves recommend for helping you minify your code. They include CSSNano (for CSS), HTMLMinifier for HTML, and UglifyJS (for JavaScript).

Leverage Your Browser Caching

Leveraging your browser caching means limiting the time your website tells any browser to cache (store) information for quick loading. To do this, set your “expires” header to a different timeframe. The standard cache expiration rate is one year.

Optimize Images

We talked about when we said to compress some larger files. You will also need to do this with images. However, do not use the same tool (Gzip). Instead, use something like Photoshop or GIMP to give you more granular control of the final product. Also, make sure that the correct file types are used for the proper types of images. Generally, you want to use JPG files for photographs and complex images. You’ll want to use PNG files for graphics and objects with fewer than 16 colors. There are also SVG images and a few other filetypes. Still, generally, you’ll want to ensure that most of your site uses JPG, PNG, or SVG filetypes for images. You can also use CSS sprite sheets to create a template for images you often use (like icons and buttons). This allows you to combine all your frequently used images into a single file that loads at once. Then you can display (using CSS) the part of the larger image you wish. Again, this will cut down on HTTP requests to your server and improve Page Speed scores.

Too Much for You? Let the Contractor Advertising SEO Professionals Handle Your Page Speed Optimization

If all of this sounds too technical or complicated to you (or you don’t want to deal with it), you can always contact the team of SEO professionals here at Contractor Advertising. We’re always available to help you with all your Page Speed optimization needs! Contact us today.