When you create a website your primary goal is to get more and more visitors attracted to it. A research says 1 second delay in website Loading speed may reduce your page views by 11% your conversion rate by 7% and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. This shows along with quality content, backlinks and other tools which you use to improve SEO of your website loading speed of a website is a relatively important aspect of your website not only for better SEO but also to provide a quick and better user experience to your visitors. In this article “how to increase the loading speed of your website” we will be discussing different measures you can take to increase it and where can you check your website loading speed.

Why you need to speed up your website

Let's take a quick look on some of the points which show why you need to speed up your website

For Better user experienceTo increase your search engine rankingsTo increase conversion rate

Websites where you can check web site loading speed

Below is the list of some popular websites where you can check your websites speed and suggestions provided by them in areas which you have to improve to increase your website speed

GT MetrixWeb Page TestUp TrendsSucuriPage scoringGoogle Page speed insightCDN speed testPingdomSEO site checkupDare Boost

Ways by which you can speed up your website

There are different factors responsible for the Slow Loading of your website we have picked major factors which cut down your website loading speed and by working on them how you can increase your speed.

Using optimized images

Images are the most common factor responsible for the slow loading of your website although it is a good practice to place images on your website, blog pages not only for SEO point of view but to keep your visitors engaged. An uncompressed image will cost you in slow loading of your website to cut this off you need to compress images with different tools available in the market say, for WordPress you can use WPsmush PRO which is a popular tool for compressing images. you can compress images up to 70%-80% without any noticeable difference in its image quality. Therefore using optimized images in your website is the first step in the checklist.

Too many HTTP requests

Another major factor responsible for the slow loading of a website is too many HTTP requests. To understand this when someone visits your website their web browser fetches file (eg, images, page, java scripts) from your server this is done by using HTTP request. The more the number of these files you have will result in slow loading of a web page, therefore, you should be focusing on minimizing HTTP requests. To reduce your HTTP requests there are many ways to do it.

By combining CSS files togetherCombining CSS and java scriptsReduce unnecessary imagesCompress size of images which are taking time to load

Optimizing CSS

Optimizing CSS means organizing your web page by keeping CSS files at the top of your page and java scripts snippets at the bottom. You can check the status of your websites CSS by pasting your URL in the following Link CSS delivery Tool

Remove Unnecessary Plugins

There are huge numbers of plugins which are available for you to use in your website every plugin has its different functioning and use, together they all affect your website loading speed. You need to ask yourself do you really need a specific plugin or not? You can go through the result of website loading tests with the plugin and after disabling a plugin you can see the difference there and can make your decision, try to use plugins which really add value to your site and are important.

Enabling Compression

With the use of Gzip compression technology you can minimize the size of browser based HTTP responses near about 70%.GZIP compresses your text files on the web server after which the visitor's web browser will automatically unzip the files. With the help of this tool you can boost up your site loading, if you are not sure whether your hosting provider is using it or not you can simply go to the link(checkgzipcompression.com) and paste your website URL and check it your self

Enable Browser cache

When a visitor visits your website there are certain elements of your website which are temporarily stored. This makes the next time you visit much faster by reducing page loads for repeat visitors.

To enable caching, you will want to add the following code to your .htaccess file:

ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 seconds" ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 2592000 seconds" ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 604800 seconds" ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 604800 seconds" ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 604800 seconds" ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 2592000 seconds"

Use of Content Delivery Network(CDN)

CDN (Content Delivery Network)

According to KeyCDN “A CDN, or Content Delivery Network, is a group of servers strategically placed across the globe with the purpose of delivering static content to users much faster. When a visitor makes a request to a website, that request is routed to the nearest possible CDN edge server, thus reducing latency and improving site speed.” When a visitor visits your website he is directed to the nearest server to download the required files to access your website this will help to reduce the load on any one single server and reduces your loading time.

Minimizing Redirects

Redirects are instructions which takes visitor from one location to another, redirects will increase your webpage loading time. If you do not use any redirects, you are serving your content significantly faster. Redirects are likely the one single most time waster in your code especially when you consider mobile networks. They dramatically affect your page speed in a noticeably bad way.

Using faster Web hosting plans

Your speed of website is very much dependent on your hosting plan, therefore you should select a web hosting plan which will maintain your website speed. You can check out this article on selecting a web hosting plan.

Using proper fonts

Fonts could be another reason for slow loading of your website if you use many different styles of fonts along with boldness, underline and italics and other sorts of styling they may take the time to load. There are some fonts which are heavy in nature and takes more times as compared to light fonts in loading. Fonts like Arial, Comic Sans, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman are lighter in nature as compared to heavy fonts like Fredericka the Great and Raleway. While surfing a website in computer fonts may not affect loading speed but while surfing a website in mobile you can feel the difference.This doesn’t mean that you don’t select heavy fonts on your website you can use them in styling, writing headings but it is recommended to use lighter fonts in your blog posts and articles.

The Bottom Line

As you can see there are various factors which may cause to slow down your website, if you are professional then you can easily increase your website loading speed but if you are a beginner then you may face difficulties to configure some of these steps for this you can take help of your hosting provider or may search for tutorials to learn. If you have any questions or comments, then please write below. If you like this article, then do share.