11 ways for Boost website Speed

Website speed has become an important parameter of SEO World. The Speed of website or webpage affects the large number of important SEO factors, including Bounce Rate, Conversion Rate and also impact on Keywords Ranking.

What is Page Speed?
Page Speed is the measurement of how fast the content and full pages of your website load. Most of the seo’s are slightly confused with site speed. In other words, we can say that the time taken a webpage to full display.

Early 2010 Google Announced that website speed factor include in their 200+ Ranking factor. As we all know that Google always provide user friendly and relevant search Result to users and if the website is faster than the chances of bounce rate will be low and longer stay time, in this way user got positive experience.

If the website speed is slower than the search Engine crawler crawl fewer pages of the website and this could negative effect on your website indexed. Page with longer loading time can cause low conversion rate and high bounce rate.

The above information is interesting and good to know and now I will put together here the ways to increase your website speed 

[1] Enable Gzip Compression

When a user hits on a website or webpage, a request has been to server for desired files. And if the website have longer size file and its take more time to fully load on browser. 

Gzip software reduces the size of your CSS, JavaScript and HTML files that are larger the150 bytes. Dot not Gzipped images which are used in website, if you Gzip images, then you have no control over the quality of images. So use image editor for reduce image size like Photoshop, coral draw and many more. Gzip can reduce the size of pages and style sheets up to 70%.

In 2013 Matt Cutts warned web site webmasters that a website speed ranking factor would likely be added to mobile site also and Google also recommended the Responsive website design for mobile sites.

Now next question comes to mind the how to add Gzip compression code on website.

2 Minify and optimize the CSS and JavaScript:

Optimize CSS File

• Use online CSS coding as possible and fix all CSS Files before JS Files.
• Combine all the CSS file into one CSS File
• Define all images in CSS Files

Optimize JS File

• Use inline Java Script coding as possible and use JS files after CSS Files.
• Combine all JS files into one and use as possible as less Java Scripts.
• Don’t  block JS Files they can increase your website loading time
• By optimizing the compression code your website’s CSS and javascript are automatically compressed you can dramatically increase your page speed

[3] Reduce Redirect

If a web page redirect to another page your user faces some extra time for HTTP request-response cycle to complete. SO reduces redirect for speed up the website.

[4] Set Cache Expiration

Browser cache a lot of information such as images, JavaScript, style sheet and many more. If a user revisits the website then the browser doesn’t reload the entire page only a part of page reload. So it’s important to have expiration cache time to speed up loading time of webpage.

You will check the cache expiration by Yslow if you already have.

You can add Cache Expiration code in .htaccess file. Here is the Cache expiration code

    ## EXPIRES CACHING ##

    <IfModule mod_expires.c>

    ExpiresActive On

    ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year”

    ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year”

    ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year”

    ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year”

    ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month”

    ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month”

    ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month”

    ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month”

    ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month”

    ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year”

    ExpiresDefault “access 1 month”

    </IfModule>

    ## EXPIRES CACHING ##

You will decide the cache expiration period, according to the website updating frequency. It may be one week, one month or one year

[5] Use Optimized Images

• Optimized the images which are you use in your web page. 
• Resize the image size which is longer in size and should be in PNG format. 
• With the help of CSS Sprits you can create a template that you use on your website frequently like icons and button. CSS Sprits will combine the images into a large image that all load at once. (Reduce the http request to the server). In this way you can minimize the load time by CSS sprits and optimized images.
• Define image dimension in <img> tag, or in CSS of website.

[6] Broken Links

Broken links may increase your website loading time, so its require to find out the broken links and fix them.

[7] Character Set

By using character set you can reduce your webpage loading time. Syntax for character set is

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″>

[8] Reduce and Delete Unused Plugins

Remove all unused and deactivated plugin which are installed in website.  

[9] Server Response Time

The website speed also depends on how much time your server responds to a request. Server response time depends on the amount of traffic on website at a time and hosting configuration. You will speed up your server response time by better hosting selection (bandwidth, server up time, minimize database queries. 

[10] Web Font Optimization

If you can use other resource fonts then they may be take time to load. Use font code directory and remove all unnecessary fonts. 

All browsers follow below element loading path 

HTML-->CSS --> JSS --> Images --> etc

So put your HTML first after then CSS files then Java Script file and then images, Audio, video then Google plus code and at last google analytics code. 

HTML -->  CSS --> JSS --> Images/Audio/Video --> Google Plus code --> Google Analytics code

One more thing put your content above the fold.

After all the above tips applying on the website you will check your website speed by Website Speed Checker Tool such as GTMatrix 

Open the https://gtmetrix.com/   and Enter the url of a webpage or domain, then click on the Analyze button as per below image

After clicking on analyzing button you will see the Website Speed Report like Page Speed, Yslow score, recommendation, page loading details (no of http requests, time, size and various analysis options