Most website owners are aware that San Diego SEO is a big part of the overall strategy for achieving higher search engine rankings. There’s no question this is true, but it’s also important to Improve Your Website Performance in other ways. Even if you work with an SEO company in San Diego, it won’t help much if your website performs poorly.
For instance, when someone visits your website and your images take forever to load, they’ll probably abandon your site quickly. When you start losing visitors because of poor performance, it won’t matter how great your content is.
Tips to how to Improve Your Website Performance
It also won’t matter how many backlinks you have, how good your meta descriptions are, or how many SEO companies in San Diego are helping you. Start by optimizing your website’s performance, and then you can build on that by fine-tuning your SEO profile.
Image Sizes
One of the most important factors contributing to website performance is the size of your images. Generally speaking, the larger the size of your images, the longer it will take your web page to load. If you take the time to optimize your website images, it will improve loading time and the user experience as well.
A few rules of thumb which you should observe start with cropping images so they stay within screen boundaries. Next, you shouldn’t place too many images on a single screen, because that will bog down load time. If necessary, download a page ruler so that you can obtain precise dimensions. It will also help if you use image compression tools and plug-ins to limit the size of your images.
Paige Weight
Paige weight is a term that is synonymous with page size and it incorporates factors such as images, JavaScript, and style sheets (CSS). The reason page weight is important for website performance is because it can be another Factor affecting the speed of page loading. The more content you include on a page, the greater its page weight is, and the slower it will load. In most cases, page weight should not exceed 1 MB of data.
To get down to this figure, make sure to check for any plugins that aren’t really necessary on your site. Take the time to analyze which specific components weigh down your pages. You may want to consider using off-site video, or combining multiple assets into a single file. You can also combine JavaScript with CSS to achieve some efficiencies and lower page weight.
Reduce the Number of Http Requests
HTTP requests are one of the building blocks the web is founded on. They make it possible for a web browsers to request data from servers, so the data can be displayed on a page. Whenever you visit a particular website, your browser will send an HTTP request asking for data. The server will then send back the requested data so the page can be displayed, using components such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
In order for your Improve your Website Performance, there should be minimal HTTP requests from server to browser. To reduce the number of HTTP requests from your site, you can optimize images as well as JavaScript and CSS files. Wherever possible, combine multiple JavaScript files. You can also make use of a Content Distribution Network (CDN) to manage the number of HTTP requests.
Limit the Number of Redirects
This is another issue which can degrade website performance. Redirects cause users to be navigated from one page to another. When a website has an excessive number of redirects, it will cause the website to be ranked lower. Some redirects also point to pages that don’t exist, and this will also cause lower rankings for the website. In order to reduce the number of redirects, you can implement a permanent 301 redirect.
This tells Google you want the current new page to replace an old one, and that traffic should be directed to the new page. Remove any old redirects which are no longer useful, and check for broken links to make sure each page is fully functional.
Minimize Geographic Limitations
You might not think of geographical location as a performance issue. However, loading will always be faster between two parties that are geographically closer. Obviously, you can’t do anything about the distance between your visitors and your website.
You may however, be able to expedite things by using a CDN. A CDN makes use of distributed servers at different data centers. These servers provide content for multiple websites and applications. When files are stored much closer to your audience and their location, load time can be significantly reduced.
Examine Your Hosting Plan
When you first selected your website host, it may have been the ideal choice. However, as your website has grown and traffic has increased, your website host may not be such a good fit anymore. In such cases, you may notice a difference in downtime or a general decline in performance. When this happens, it’s best that you upgrade to a host that can accommodate your growing number of followers. Especially if you’re making use of a shared hosting plan, you should consider some alternatives.
A VPS hosting solution is affordable, and it can scale very well for a growing website. It’s a very practical way for small businesses and startups to scale up and take advantage of flexibility. You may also want to consider a serverless website, since these are adept at increasing security and reducing load times.
One last option is to consider using dedicated website servers. From these, you can obtain fast and reliable web connections which can scale to meet high-traffic demands. They could be a bit more expensive than a shared host, but you’ll generally get better website performance from them. That’s because all the resources of a server will be dedicated to your website.
Want to see how your website performs? Use our website audit report tool to see how To Improve your Website Performance online.
